Five Years after Lisbon: Lessons Learned and the Way Forward

Abstract

At their 2007 Lisbon Summit, Africa and the EU unveiled an ambitious strategy aimed at radically transforming their relationship, which had been traditionally characterized by a donor-recipient dynamic as well as a number of shortcomings stemming, inter alia, from the fragmented nature of the relation, the lack of sufficient policy and institutional synergy, and the absence of a coherent and integrated vision of what this relationship ought to be. The adoption of the Joint Africa-EU Strategy (JAES) was thus intended to respond to a host of internal challenges that had plagued the relationship for decades. More importantly, however, the JAES was also conceived of as a policy and political response to external challenges that called for a redefinition of the relationship in light of the evolving global context as well as the profound changes affecting the regional context in Europe and Africa.