African and European leaders meet in Brussels this week for the latest in a series of summits highlighting a new scramble for influence and investment in Africa.

Presidents and heads of state from both blocs, together with officials from the African Union and the European Commission, are expected to meet to update the Joint Africa-EU strategy signed in 2007 and sign a political pact cementing ties.

EU officials say the summit will discuss peace and security, investment, climate change and migration. It will be preceded by a meeting between African business leaders and their European counterparts.

This is the fourth such summit and while it follows an engagement that goes back many years, it comes amidst growing interest in Africa by global powers.

China, India and Japan have started holding regular Africa-centred summits, while President Barack Obama invited African presidents to the first US-Africa Leaders Summit in Washington DC in August.

READ: US outlines Africa summit agenda

Economies grew

A lot of the interest in Africa is economic. Sub-Saharan economies grew by 4.7 per cent in 2013, according to figures from the World Bank, and are projected to grow by 5.3 per cent this year and 5.5 per cent in 2016.

With peace and stability returning to many countries on the continent, this has sparked an upsurge in Foreign Direct Investment, which rose 16.2 per cent last year to $43 billion.

However, the areas attracting investment in Africa are changing as some of the major markets mature. While the extractive industries attracted 26 per cent of the capital invested in Africa in 2007, that figure had dropped to 12 per cent in 2012 while manufacturing doubled to 43.1 per cent in the same period.

The EU remains a major trading partner, but policy makers in Brussels are keen to tie up the controversial Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) over trade with Africa.

Negotiations over the EPAs are deadlocked over how much free access African countries have to give their European counterparts under the reciprocity terms of the agreements but the EU has upped the ante by announcing a deadline of October 1 for a deal to be signed.

READ: Europe keen to end stalemate with EAC in trade deal talks

The EU remains Africa’s most important trading partner, but negotiators from the bloc are keenly aware of the growing interest and influence from China, India, and other emerging nations like Brazil, South Korea and Turkey.

In July 2012, China announced a $20 billion credit window available to African countries over three years, arguably the largest bilateral programmes of its kind. This was higher than the $16.5 billion provided under the European Development Fund between over five years from 2008.

Many African leaders prefer the Chinese financing model, which is not conditional on external issues such as good governance and respect for human rights.

READ: China-Africa trade surpassed $200 billion in 2013

This has made China a key financier in countries with a democratic deficit like Sudan, South Sudan, Zimbabwe and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The EU remains a major donor to Africa. The $35 billion that the continent received from the bloc in aid in 2011 was more than half of total aid. Most of the top donors to Africa, by share of aid, are EU countries, including Ireland, Belgium, Portugal and France.

While aid is a key instrument in Europe’s foreign policy towards Africa, the bloc is keen to build other bridges as aid starts to pale in importance relative to trade and foreign direct investment.

For instance, the EU Naval Force has led the way in counterpiracy operations in the Gulf of Aden, a modern-day form of gunboat diplomacy that, coupled with support to the African Union Peacekeeping Mission to Somalia, and training programmes, gives the bloc leverage in the Horn of Africa.

However, the meeting comes at a time when many of the resolutions agreed upon at the last summit in Tripoli in 2010 are unravelling or have been tested by divergent interests.

EU countries have shown renewed interest in military interventions in Africa, notably with the NATO-led bombing that broke Muammar Gaddafi’s resistance in Libya and, more recently, with French intervention in Mali and the Central African Republic.

African battles

This has raised questions of sovereignty by a group of African leaders led by President Museveni of Uganda, who prefers African armies to fight African battles and has been quietly pushing for more robust defence pacts among African states, starting in East Africa.

Discussions on governance are likely to revolve around the role of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in providing justice and ending impunity in Africa.

In Tripoli the leaders said, in a joint communiqué, that they were “united in the fight against impunity at national and international level and the protection of human rights,” and pledged international cooperation in seeking justice, peace and reconciliation, “including the prosecution of the most serious crimes of concern to the international community.”

Prosecution of Uhuru

However, African leaders last year rallied to pass resolutions rejecting the prosecution of President Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy, William Ruto, as well as other sitting African heads of state, such as Sudan’s Omar al Bashir, at the ICC, against opposition from countries backing the court, many of them from the EU.

READ: Crossroads: Can AU save Uhuru from the ICC?

During the Tripoli Summit, EU and African leaders pledged to support the implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement that ended the fighting in Sudan.

It is remarkable to note that only four years later, not only did the CPA lead to independence for South Sudan in July 2011, but the new country is now embroiled in a civil war between factions loyal to President Salva Kiir and his former deputy, Dr Riek Machar.

While the leaders jointly vowed to “condemn intolerance in all its forms,” the passage of anti-homosexuality legislation in Uganda, Nigeria, Malawi in recent months appears to have resurrected a contest of cultures and values between the two blocs and one that the leaders meeting in Brussels will have to work around diplomatically.