MAINTENANCE. At a time when Europe and China have just signed trade agreements, when America wants to play its part, what about Africa-Mediterranean-Europe?

The arrival of Donald Trump in the White House will undoubtedly have reshuffled the cards of a globalization now plagued by trade wars between the powerful American, Chinese, European and many other economies. The health crisis will have accelerated the highlighting of each other's strengths and weaknesses against a background of the need to redeploy new strategies to both strengthen ourselves from within and forge commercial relations from new approaches.

In this environment, where does Africa fit? How can it make its strengths and arguments prevail? How to find the right balance between the different business partners and especially with whom to build privileged and useful relationships? The question is important at a time when, within the framework of the Organization of African, Caribbean and Pacific States, Africa is working on new partnership agreements with the European Union .

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In a more restricted, even more direct framework, a reflection is emerging around the need to build a space that would combine three entities: Africa, the Mediterranean and Europe . This is all that the Fondation La Verticale AME - Afrique Méditerranée Europe is dedicated to, initiated by Jean-Louis Guigou , university professor, senior French civil servant, specialist in regional planning and currently president of the Institute of economic forecasting of the Mediterranean world (Ipemed). The President of the Foundation, Élisabeth Guigou , born in Marrakech and above all Member of Parliament for Vaucluse, then for Seine-Saint-Denis from 1997 to 2017, President of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Assembly from 2012 to 2017, Keeper of the Seals from 1997 to 2000 and Minister of Employment and Solidarity from 2000 to 2002, confided in Point Afrique on the relevance of this approach and on the ways and means to be implemented to make it concrete and useful to all the parts.

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Le Point Afrique: The Covid-19 health crisis has revealed many weaknesses on both sides of the Mediterranean. How to change the game?

Élisabeth Guigou: The pandemic has deeply affected Europe, around the Mediterranean and Africa, but in a different way. In Europe, the health crisis is extremely serious, probably because the populations are older and less used to pandemics. In terms of health, the dissymmetry of the situations is flagrant, this should encourage Europe to try to draw inspiration from good African practices. On the other hand, thanks to the social shock absorbers and the considerable aid granted by the States and soon by the European Union with its recovery plan, the economic crisis could be less deep and shorter than in Africa.

Given the seriousness of the economic and social crisis in Africa, Europe obviously bears an even greater responsibility to help the African continent to overcome this crisis as quickly as possible. It must do so by supporting in particular the rescheduling with a moratorium of the African debt, a position moreover affirmed as a priority by the President of the French Republic. On the African side, we must quickly put ourselves in a position to be able to consolidate the economies. And Europe must help Africa in every possible way, it is essential to assert its desire for a strong and renewed partnership between the two continents. Moreover, this crisis shows that, more than ever, solidarity between Europe, the Mediterranean and Africa is essential, and even more urgent. This is what we are working on within the Fondation La Verticale AME - Afrique Méditerranée Europe.

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How to transform shared histories into political, economic, social and cultural solidarities?

The links between Europeans, South Mediterraneans and Africans are extremely close. This is the double effect of shared history, but also of geographical proximity. This counts more and more, in a context where global warming makes it necessary to favor proximity in exchanges. Our human and cultural ties are also very dense: we share European languages with many countries in French-speaking, English-speaking and Portuguese-speaking Africa. Finally and above all, these human ties are an extraordinary wealth that we do not value enough. The presence of African diasporas in France, for example, is a considerable asset, which should be used more to strengthen ties with the Mediterranean and Africa.

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How can these links be transformed into political, economic, social and cultural solidarity? This is precisely the reason why we advocate the creation of this La Verticale foundation. Because we have to move from talk to action! And to move from speeches - even very positive ones, in any case on the French side, since the President of the Republic affirmed from his speech in Ouagadougou in November 2017 his wish to carry out "the stowage" of the two continents - to actions, he you have to work on it, because it's not that easy!

As has already been done on the American and Asian continents, we must invent tools that allow us, Europeans and Africans, to work together, on an equal footing, in a renewed and shared partnership. Not on an ad hoc basis during summits or ephemeral meetings, but on a permanent, concerted, equal basis, to build this solidarity in key areas.

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How does your La Verticale AME foundation plan to move forward, concretely?

The La Verticale AME Foundation plans to assume this permanent and regular task thanks to working groups that would bring together different networks of actors.

First, a first network of think tanks in order to objectify the data, to agree on common diagnoses; a second network bringing together entrepreneurs by theme (water, energy, transport, etc.) because we need to stimulate cross-investment, the dissemination of know-how and the sharing of production chains; and finally, a third network, political, because we need an impetus at the highest levels.

With La Verticale AME, we recommend developing these three networks which, moreover, already exist in “prefigurative” mode, of which we have already brought together the founding members, and which are of course open to new memberships. Thus, we brought together the political network by videoconference on July 16. Five Heads of State, a Prime Minister and African Ambassadors, as well as European personalities met around the former President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker, Honorary President of La Verticale AME. On the European side, personalities who have always campaigned for this solidarity participated. For example, Romano Prodi, Felipe Gonzalez, Piero Fassino... personalities from Southern Europe, but also from the North, since Horst Köhler, former President of the German Republic, who works a lot on issues of Europe-Africa links , was also present. So much for the first network.

The think tanks have already met three times, and on December 3, the Entrepreneurs Club network met for the first time. About thirty companies from both continents, some of them very prestigious, contributed to the exchanges and adopted by consensus a call for co-production in order to contribute to the industrialization of Africa.

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What tools would you recommend to operationalize active solidarity around value-creating projects between Africa, the Mediterranean and Europe?

The strategic projects that create value in Africa are undoubtedly renewable energies, agriculture and food security, digital technology, logistics, education and training, and control of the urbanization of rapidly growing African cities. .. and, of course, health!

It is in these priority sectors that we must try to generate interest for business leaders on both continents. They should therefore meet regularly, probably preferably by sector, and work together in order to identify the obstacles they encounter and also bring out solutions, consensus around proposed actions... For example, if the Considering the logistics sector, it is clear that France, like all European countries, is losing almost all markets to the Chinese, who have a considerable strike force. One of the first things to do, I believe, would be to bring together business leaders in the building and public works sectors, and to bring out common proposals for the development of infrastructure in Africa, through major strategic axes, of an ambition comparable to that carried by the new silk roads.

Another inspiring example is the Special Economic Zones (SEZs) created by China. There are now more than thirty on the African continent. They make it possible to offer companies all the external savings and the environment necessary for their development. Europeans should adopt this tool, present Africans with an equivalent or even optimized offer, so that European and African companies that want to cooperate can work together in these special economic zones, and thus contribute together to the industrialization of Africa.

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What organization and what process should be put in place to dissolve corruption and the informal sector, two pitfalls that are very present in the countries of the South and harmful to any partnership?

This is a delicate subject which concerns first and foremost the governments of each of the African countries, because a strong national consensus is needed to carry out a major policy in the fight against corruption and the informal sector. But perhaps, I will put forward a practical suggestion here: why not offer young people from different countries the possibility of creating cooperative enterprises of the SSE type, that is to say coming under the social economy and united? European aid could contribute to this, by guaranteeing access to good wages, unemployment benefits, social security benefits and a decent pension.

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This tool would be likely to divert unemployed young people from the temptation of the informal sector and would experiment with another way of creating jobs, with a more innovative economic and social protection system, and also firmly rooted in the micro-territories, with which it is necessary to working more is one of the keys to development.

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How to mobilize the diasporas around such a project of common construction?

According to a study published in December 2019 and reported by Le Point Afrique, 71% of young graduates and executives from the diaspora plan to work in or for Africa, and 38% even say they are ready to leave immediately.

Of course, nothing is simple, but, on this point too, I will put forward a suggestion: we could imagine and organize voluntary work for the diasporas over periods of a few months, recurring or not, in order to accomplish the most various. For example, setting up an irrigation service, managing a hospital, creating a photovoltaic mini-grid... so many activities that could also be monitored remotely, from the country of usual residence. .

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Such a system would have the merit of gently acclimatizing the diasporas to the African countries where they plan to settle, particularly to do business. Also, given the current state of dispersion of the diasporas in very many associations, one could consider the establishment of an umbrella structure that would federate resources, drawing inspiration from what Doctors Without Borders was able to achieve in the past. Thus, diaspora associations could more easily have a platform of skills of all kinds: agronomists, accountants, engineers, computer scientists... Such an umbrella structure for the diasporas could benefit from French public subsidies, but also from the European Commission, of the UN, etc.

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How do you see the future of this Africa-Mediterranean-Europe group in the face of Chinese and American aggressiveness?

As Jean-Louis Guigou - who is the initiator of La Verticale AME - likes to repeat, paraphrasing Saint-Exupéry, “the future cannot be predicted. It builds itself. And that is the whole purpose of our Verticale AME: working together to build together and not trying to impose a French or European vision on Africans, nor the reverse for that matter. It is urgent to get involved, because today, in the context of the so-called “regionalization of globalization”, we see that the Asian and American continents have built new solidarities between their territories. This was the case in June 2018 in America with CUSMA, the Canada-United States-Mexico agreement, which came into force last July.

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And quite recently, on November 15, we witnessed the birth, under the impetus of China, of the largest comprehensive regional economic partnership, the RECP. It brings together fifteen countries of Southeast Asia, from Japan to Australia, and represents 30% of the world's wealth, more than Europe, at 25%. Obviously, it is now essential that the Africa-Mediterranean-Europe "orange district" organize itself strongly, that we give life to this vision of a "new Alliance" initiated by Jean-Claude Juncker and that we carry with La Verticale AME.

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In this perspective, and according to a widely shared opinion, the previous format of the Cotonou agreements - also called ACP, for Africa-Caribbean-Pacific, an aggregate that is too heterogeneous -, currently being renegotiated, is clearly outdated. We need to move on. Not just organizing trade between our two continents, but also thinking about the integration of standards of all kinds - technical, health, environmental, financial... - as well as the professional mobility of executives, among others. Concrete provisions that will enable Africans and Europeans to build the future together, in complete solidarity.

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Interview by Malick Diawara

Sebdo Le Point SA

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