Long before this summit, European Union members and business investors have been making consistent efforts at capitalizing on and exploring several emerging opportunities offered by the newly introduced African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), which provides a unique and valuable access to an integrated African market of 1.3 billion people. In practical reality, it aims at creating a continental market for goods and services, with free movement of business people and investments in Africa.

The potential to increase trade, economic growth, job creation and integration across the continent remains enormous, because today, only around 17% of African trade flows take place between African countries.

The aim of the EU programme -- called Global Gateway -- is to help underpin the global recovery by mobilising investments in digital, clean energy and transport networks, as well as boosting health, education and research systems across the world. Low and middle-income countries were already facing a US$2.7 trillion infrastructure investment gap before the pandemic, according to World Bank estimates.

Another annual international conference on the climate crisis ended on November 13 in Glasgow, Scotland where a contentious debate over the final document revealed fundamental differences on key issues.

In recent decades, French foreign policy in Africa has been preoccupied with a jump-start of relations with the African nations, marked by a gradual curtailment of the Françafrique, a concept that provided for a direct military and political intervention in affairs of the French-speaking nations on the continent. France is now in search for a more balanced framework for interaction with the countries in the region.

Effective solutions to global challenges can only be developed and implemented in dialogue with Asian states.

What was particularly chilling this month, however, was listening to government spokesman Gabriel Attal admit that visas were being denied to Algerians, Moroccans and Tunisians because not enough of their compatriots were being deported. The claim from Attal — once viewed as a restrained centrist — was that too many people were already in France illegally, so even those with legitimate reasons to travel should be denied entry.

Africa needs more robust political analysis of countries’ internal dynamics and their relations with world powers. This approach is more empirically sound than resorting to ‘Françafrique’ which adopts a moralising and infantilising approach to African actors. And the notion is misleading for four reasons.

Before Merkel’s leadership, history recognized a number of famous empowered women, such as Queen Elizabeth, the monarch for the UK and 15 other Commonwealth realms; and the “Iron Lady” Margaret Thatcher, who was UK prime minister from 1979 to 1990 and leader of the country’s Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990.

The EU strategy currently appears to be pointed more towards building on established partnerships and developing new ones with like-minded countries in the Indo-Pacific to ensure its role and growing presence in the Indo-Pacific region.