By AGGREY MUTAMBO

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The European Union is proposing increased focus on job creation and security in Africa as a long-term strategy to tame illegal migration from the continent.

In a new EU-Africa strategy announced on Thursday, Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, said the five-point strategy will be specific on improving the conditions of living in Africa, and hence discourage the urge to cross borders illegally.

“Today’s Strategy with Africa is the roadmap to move forward and bring our partnership to the next level. Africa is the European Union’s natural partner and neighbour,” she said at the launch.

The strategy will await comments from African counterparts and is mostly likely to be a subject of discussion during the upcoming EU-Africa Summit due for February 18 in Brussels, Belgium.

Ten policy missions

Traditionally, the bloc, Africa’s biggest foreign investor, had been running security programmes across Africa providing funds to pay soldiers and run missions for peace. On Thursday, the bloc said it was elevating relations to tackle “challenges of the 21st century” including climate change, peace and security, migration problems and joblessness.

With 10 common security and defence policy missions in Africa, including in Somalia, the EU has provided €3.5 billion through the African Peace Facility since it was established in 2004, including €2.4 billion ($2.7 billion) since 2014 to support such programmes such as the African Union Mission in Somalia (Amisom) and a counter-piracy patrol programme off the coast of Somalia.

Sustainability, focus

The EU has also contributed €253.6 million ($286 million) to the G5 Sahel Joint Force to combat terrorism and security threats and improve regional security.

In an interview with The EastAfrican last week, EU’s Foreign Policy chief Josep Borrell said the bloc was moving to relations that will also focus on environmental conservation and good governance, meaning all programmes the EU will run in Africa must adhere to these.

“Now there is a new policy requiring us to ensure environmental sustainability as well as good policy on governance including human rights. It demands that all our agreements must include this elements,” Borrell said.

The strategy says the EU will deepen the bloc’s support to African peace efforts “through a more structured and strategic form of cooperation, with particular focus on regions where tensions and vulnerabilities are highest.

It also proposed to “good governance, democracy, human rights, the rule of law and gender equality in action and cooperation” as well as secure resilience by linking humanitarian, development, peace and security interventions at all stages of the cycle of conflict and crises.”

Cutbacks

The new programme may have come as EU limits funds to programmes it was already supporting.

In Amisom, for example, the EU which paid 90 percent of the Mission’s costs reduced the allocations by 20 percent. And bloc has demanded adequate reforms including how the successor Mission to Amisom will operate beyond combat, to continue receiving fundings.

“We need the effort of the Africans and we need the financial support of the European Union, but it has to be reviewed. We want an effective mission,” Borrell added.

Amisom is supposed to change over to a transitional multidimensional force from end of next month. But the actual mandate will be decided by the UN Security Council.

For the EU, an Africa with more jobs could help tame the tide and needless deaths of illegal migrants making perilous journeys to Europe. Critics though argued the programmed we more targeting the end problems than addressing the actual causes of migration.

It promises to promote investment opportunities by scaling up the use of innovative financing mechanisms; and to boost regional and continental economic integration, particularly through the African Continental Free Trade Agreement, as well as supporting technological innovations in Africa.

The EU is already Africa’s biggest direct investor, having sent in €222 billion ($252 billion), six times the amount spent by the US and eight times that of China.

This money though will depend on how African countries reform policies especially in regulations on foreign investors, business working environment, investment in climate change as well as research and innovation support.

In some cases, the EU was criticised for engaging rogue African governments like that of Omar al-Bashir in Sudan to tame the flow of migrants, especially from Eritrea, as opposed to building opportunities where the migrants were coming from.

“and we are discussing about it and I hope that we will be able to reach an agreement in order to continue providing this financial support.”