Paper long abstract:

The Relations between Africa and Europe are longstanding and comprehensive in that they affect a large number of policy areas including educational exchange. But it is a deeply and structurally unequal relationship is need of fundamental transformation. While the need for this change has long been recognised, discussed, declared and committed to it simply has not happened. In fact, cleavages and mistrust have grown in certain ares such as security and governance. Partnership agreements have not yielded significantly better results in the past decade than a decade earlier. While the African region is agonising about its own internal change and seeking a new agenda to inspire the next fifty years, the Europeans are also going through their own change internally and their international roles are being redefined by tectonic changes in world affairs. Both face the task to implement the sustainable development goals in a manner that assist to redefine both the wider world in which they exist and their individual circumstances. The demands differ as for Africa is assistance to achieve the most modest of the goals and help to get to its feet and fend for itself. For Europe is the international responsibility to be exemplary and Agreements that frame the current partnership between the two continents have fundamental flaws that we will argue arise from an erroneous analysis of what is hindering a positive evolution in Africa-Europe relations. This paper will propose a diagnosis that has been known in Africa for a long time and on that basis suggest short-term and long-term interventions that may bring fundamental transformation needed closer to reality.