Strategic Pragmatism: A New Approach to European Engagement in Africa

Abstract

Despite maintaining a structural advantage in soft power, European influence in Africa is eroding amid China’s expanding investment-led engagement and a decline in US multilateral engagement. This article examines the gap between normative appeal and material impact, and contends that soft power alone is no longer sufficient in a context where visible economic outcomes increasingly shape influence. It argues that European policy should shift toward an investment- and partnership-oriented approach, conceptualized as a “values through delivery” framework, to sustain its influence in Africa.

Keywords: EU-Africa Relations, Strategic Competition, Development, Soft Power.  

Introduction

Despite maintaining a significant advantage in soft power, Europe is losing influence in Africa. European countries continue to dominate key channels of attraction, including higher education, cultural exchange, and migration pathways, yet these assets have not translated into sustained political or economic leverage. At the same time, China has expanded its presence through infrastructure initiatives such as the Belt and Road Initiative (Labuschagne & Marais, 2019) and trade deals, positioning itself as the continent’s central economic partner (Munyati, 2024). This divergence raises a critical question: why does Europe’s soft power advantage fail to produce comparable influence?

The answer lies not in a rejection of Europe, but in the limited material expression of European partnership. While European engagement emphasizes good governance, institutional development, and development aid, it lacks the speed and visibility of China’s investment-first approach. As a result, influence in Africa is increasingly shaped by material outcomes rather than  normative appeal. Sustaining European influence, therefore, requires bridging the gap between values and delivery. This article advances a “values through delivery” framework, in which investment and partnership embed governance standards while maintaining long-term influence.  

Western decline and the ascent of China in a growing Africa

Africa’s strategic relevance to Europe is already high and increasing rapidly. The continent’s population of approximately 1.4 billion is projected to reach 2.5 billion by 2050 (Stanley, 2023), accounting for nearly a quarter of the global population and more than half of global population growth. At the same time, rapid urbanization will add roughly 500 million urban residents by 2040, accelerating economic transformation (OECD, n.d.), and significantly expanding demand for infrastructure, energy, and employment. These structural shifts have direct implications for European and transatlantic interests. Africa holds a significant share of the critical raw materials necessary for the green and digital transitions. In addition, demographic pressures and uneven economic opportunities will place additional pressure on European borders and societies. Increasingly, migration is driven less by conflict and more by gaps in employment, opportunity, and infrastructure (European External Action Service, 2020). This links future migration pressures in Europe to economic development and job creation within African economies.

Despite these growing stakes, the West’s influence is increasingly challenged by China’s expanding presence. Europe continues to dominate traditional sources of soft power, including higher education, cultural appeal, and migration pathways. The United States has historically reinforced this advantage through its foreign assistance infrastructure, most notably USAID, which alone administered over $35 billion in annual development funding across the continent (Congressional Research Service, 2025). Europe hosts the majority of African students abroad (Vigers, 2024) and remains the primary destination for long-term migrants (International Organization for Migration, n.d.). European countries also continue to rank highly in global measures of cultural influence, education quality, and freedom of expression (Jagodzinski, 2026). However, this structural advantage has not translated into equivalent political or economic leverage. Surveys suggest that China has made significant gains in public perception across Africa, surpassing most Western nations (Olander, 2025). Following the near-total dismantling of USAID in early 2025 and Washington’s broader withdrawal from multilateral institutions, this trend is likely to accelerate.  

The explanation for this divergence lies in competing models of engagement. The transatlantic approach has historically operated through diffuse networks of cultural diplomacy, institutional partnerships, and aid conditionality. The United States focuses on public diplomacy and strategic communication, and the EU prioritizes cultural relations and people-to-people ties. China, by contrast, pursues a centralized strategy that combines state-led cultural initiatives, including over 60 Confucius Institutes across the continent (MacDonald & Murray, 2022, p. 31), with large- scale investment packages that deliver rapid and visible outcomes. The scale and speed of China’s initiatives have powerfully shaped perceptions of effectiveness across the continent.

Where the United States and Europe have historically divided these responsibilities in a fairly complementary fashion, Washington's retrenchment under the Trump administration has left a vacuum that China will readily fill. This places the burden of sustaining Western engagement squarely on Europe, at precisely the moment when the cost of inaction is highest.  

Empirical evidence for Africa’s shift towards China

Data evidence of Africa’s shift toward China is substantial and multifaceted. China has been Africa’s largest bilateral trading partner since 2010. In 2024, it became the single largest exporter on the continent, accounting for 20% of Africa’s imports while absorbing 11% of its exports (Calabrese, 2025, p. 245). Bilateral goods trade now approaches $300 billion annually, which is roughly 10% of Africa’s total GDP (Mingey et al. 2025). This economic footprint is matched by a shifting political geography: an analysis of 604 Chinese investment transactions in Africa between 2010 and 2020 revealed a strong association between political proximity and Chinese foreign direct investment volume, suggesting that economic engagement and political alignment are mutually reinforcing dynamics (Zhao et al. 2025, p. 5).

At the level of public opinion, the most recent Afrobarometer survey data offers perhaps the starkest evidence of the shift: 60% of respondents described China’s influence as positive, placing it ahead of the African Union (54%), the United States (53%), and the European Union (49%) (Olander, 2025). In countries where China has invested primarily in infrastructure, perceptions have held steady or become more positive (Afrobarometer, 2024). China’s investment in Africa has also had a significant payoff in its multilateralism strategy. Analyses have found that Chinese FDI and loans are positively related to changes in political alignment (Jones et al., 2022, pp. 19-22).  

European and Chinese approaches

Europe’s current strategy toward Africa is anchored in the Global Gateway project, launched in 2021 as an explicit attempt to offer an alternative to China’s Belt and Road Initiative. It pledged to mobilize up to €300 billion (now €400 billion) in global investment between 2021 and 2027, €150 billion of which is targeted at Africa (Council of the European Union, 2025). After having reached their target two years early, EU Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen announced that she was “confident we will surpass €400 billion by 2027” (Directorate-General for the Middle East, North Africa, and the Gulf, 2025).

On paper, this represents a meaningful pivot toward investment-led engagement. In practice, the initiative has struggled to bridge the gap between ambition and delivery. While EU funding remains on track to reach the new 2027 target, tangible impact has been limited so far. With limited time remaining in the current funding cycle, Global Gateway will not implement any new projects in 2026 (Council of the European Union, 2025), signaling a broader slowdown in activity. Among the 256 Global Gateway flagship projects, roughly half are based in Africa: approximately 66 relate to climate and energy, 28 are transport-focused, 13 support the digital transition, 13 focus on education and research, and 7 are health-related (Council of the European Union, 2025). Although Global Gateway funds major infrastructure projects, these tend to be less visible and slower to implement, as well as being disconnected from the local community's needs, which reflects the larger European approach. Most initiatives involve regulatory agreements or large spending grants between the EU and African governments with limited involvement from local communities, creating a disconnect between top-down decision-making and local community needs. In addition, such investments take years, if not decades, to yield results, so the actual impact of Global Gateway will not be known for some time. As currently structured, Europe’s strategy seems to be focused on long-term but relatively passive commitments, thereby maintaining the status quo.

China’s approach, by contrast, focuses on infrastructure financing through state-backed loans, mostly delivered via the Belt and Road Initiative. Its flagship projects include the Standard Gauge Railway in Kenya and the Addis Ababa-Djibouti Railway. These projects reflect China’s approach: fast construction, low conditionality, and heavy use of Chinese contractors (Otele, 2021). Critics point to debt dependency, with Zambia defaulting on Chinese loans in 2020 (Stien & Chitonge, 2025), and limited technology transfer to local labor. Unlike Western donors, China avoids political conditionality, appealing to governments reluctant to accept governance-related conditions. This “no strings attached” approach has accelerated infrastructure delivery but raised concerns over sovereignty and long-term economic dependency (Sun, 2013).

However, both European and Chinese approaches to engagement in Africa are more heterogeneous than this comparison suggests. Within Europe, coordination challenges among member states and bureaucratic complexity often limit coherence and speed. Similarly, China’s engagement is not uniformly effective: while some projects deliver clear benefits, others face delays, cost overruns, or local backlash over debt, labor practices, and environmental concerns. Outcomes, therefore, vary across African countries depending on governance and negotiation capacity. Neither model is universally successful; influence ultimately depends on how well external strategies align with local conditions and needs.  

Europe’s way forward

Europe needs a strategic reorientation. In this context, reliance on normative conditionality and contingent investment packages is unlikely to be sufficient. Europe needs to recalibrate its strategy by treating its southern counterparts as true partners. These partnerships can serve as vehicles for democracy, rule of law, and long-term influence. This new approach could build on institutional practices that the EU has already proven successful. These methods will include Citizens’ Panels, certain initiatives that have already been implemented by Global Gateway, and alternative accountability mechanisms to conditionality.

First, the EU could draw lessons from its own Citizens’ Panels. These panels, composed of a randomly selected and representative group of European citizens, are intended to deliberate and develop policy recommendations. They are designed to bridge the gap between institutions and local community needs. Transposed to the African context, this model would not convene panels in Brussels about Africa, but rather serve as a local structured community engagement mechanism. The EU, in coordination with the local governments, should establish panels composed of community members, civil society representatives, and small business operators who would work alongside technical experts to identify priorities, design projects, and establish clear, measurable goals. This bottom-up architecture would help close the information gaps that have historically undercut EU projects. This framework would also reinforce governance  standards by giving communities a genuine stake in the outcomes, rather than presenting them with externally designed programs after the fact.

Beyond community engagement, the EU should prioritize partnership in practice rather than rhetoric. The renewed engagement should prioritize bottom-up, job-creating investments in sectors with high employment and productivity multipliers, including energy access, urban infrastructure, water and sanitation, digital connectivity, and SME finance. This is similar to the Global Gateway initiatives, but should be on a larger scale. In exchange for the targeted investment, the EU should seek preferential and transparent access to local resources and emerging markets, although this would be one of the most challenging matters to negotiate. Implementation should also occur on a regional basis in order to minimize the risk of coordination failures. Framing these initiatives as transactional investments rather than traditional aid would help enhance their legitimacy and crowd in private capital, creating a self- enforcing loop.

Finally, governance, transparency, and equality objectives should be embedded directly in project architecture rather than imposed primarily through public political conditionality. Evidence from the World Bank and OECD shows that accountability mechanisms such as milestone-based disbursement, competitive procurement, and independent audits are more effective at mitigating corruption risks than ex ante conditionality alone (OECD Legal Instruments, 2015). This approach would also reduce the political costs for local leaders who could frame the adoption of governance standards as domestic accountability measures that improve their constituents’ lives rather than complying with externally imposed European standards.

Taken together, these strategies would enable Europe to remain competitive in Africa while ensuring its initiatives are economically viable and aligned with local priorities. This would contrast with aspects of the Chinese model that prioritize rapid investment over community participation and local ownership. More broadly, it would represent a new model of European engagement, one in which values and project delivery reinforce one another.  

AI note: AI tools were used to support language and style editing. The author takes full responsibility for all research, writing, analysis, and interpretation.  

References

Afrobarometer. (2024). How popular is China in Africa? New survey sheds light on what ordinary people think. Afrobarometer. Retrieved on February 18 th from https://www.afrobarometer.org/publication/how-popular-is-china-in-africa-new-survey- sheds-light-on-what-ordinary-people-think/.

Calabrese, Linda (2025). Chinese capital and economic transformation in Africa: what has changed after Covid-19? Review of African Political Economy. https://doi.org/10.62191/ROAPE-2025-0013

Congressional Research Service. (2025). U.S. Agency for International Development: An Overview (CRS Product Number: IF10261). Congressional Research Service. Retrieved March 5 th , 2026, from https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF10261.

Council of the European Union. (2025, December 10). Global Gateway: Council endorses flagship project list for 2026 [Press release]. Council of the European Union. Retrieved on February 11 th , 2026, from https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press- releases/2025/12/10/global-gateway-council-endorses-flagship-project-list-for-2026/.

Council of the European Union. (2025, December 5). Global Gateway flagship projects (Document ST-16415-2025-INIT). https://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST- 16415-2025-INIT/en/pdf.

Council of the European Union. (n.d.). EU–Africa relations. Retrieved January 25 th , 2026, from https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/policies/eu-africa/  

Directorate-General for the Middle East, North Africa, and the Gulf (2025, November 9). Team Europe reaches €300 billion target for Global Gateway investments ahead of time. European Commision. Retrieved from https://north-africa-middle-east- gulf.ec.europa.eu/news/team-europe-reaches-eu300-billion-target-global-gateway- investments-ahead-time-2025-10-09_en  

European Commission. (n.d.). Global Gateway overview. Retrieved February 2 nd 5, 2026, from https://international-partnerships.ec.europa.eu/policies/global-gateway/global-gateway- overview_en.

European External Action Service. (2020). Why does Africa matter and why should the EU invest in the EU–Africa partnership? EEAS. Retrieved March 5 th , 2026, from https://www.eeas.europa.eu/eeas/why-does-africa-matter-and-why-should-eu-invest-eu- africa-partnership_en.

International Organization for Migration. (2024). World Migration Report 2024: Chapter 3: Africa. International Organization for Migration. Retrieved February 23 rd , 2026, from https://worldmigrationreport.iom.int/what-we-do/world-migration-report-2024-chapter- 3/africa.

Jagodzinski, Konrad. (2026). Global soft power index 2026: A global mood shift. Brand Finance. Retrieved on February 3 rd from https://brandfinance.com/insights/global-soft-power- index-2026-executive-summary

Jones et al. (2022). How Chinese Investment in Africa Changes Political Influence. Foreign Policy Research Institute. https://www.fpri.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/chinese- investment-in-africa-final.pdf

Labuschagne, Jean-Pierre, & Marais, Hannah. (2019). China’s role in African infrastructure and capital projects. Deloitte. Retrieved January 30 th , 2026, from https://www.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/industry/government-public-sector- services/china-investment-africa-infrastructure-development.html.

MacDonald, Stuart & Murray, Andrew. (2022). Soft power and cultural relations: A comparative analysis. British Council. Retrieved February 5 th , 2026, from https://www.britishcouncil.org/sites/default/files/soft_power_and_cultural_relations_a_co mparative_analysis_.pdf.

Mingey, Matthew, et al. (2025). China’s economic slowdown and spillovers to Africa. Atlantic Council. Retrieved February 5, 2026, from https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/in-depth- research-reports/report/chinas-economic-slowdown-and-spillovers-to-africa/.

Munyati, Chido. (2024, June). Why strong regional value chains will be vital to the next chapter of China and Africa’s economic relationship. World Economic Forum. https://www.weforum.org/stories/2024/06/why-strong-regional-value-chains-will-be- vital-to-the-next-chapter-of-china-and-africas-economic-relationship/

OECD. (2015). Recommendation of the Council on Public Procurement (OECD/LEGAL/0411). The Compendium of OECD Legal Instruments. https://legalinstruments.oecd.org/en/instruments/OECD-LEGAL-0411/.

OECD. (n.d.). Urbanisation, infrastructure and development. Organisation for Economic Co- operation and Development. Retrieved March 5 th , 2026, from https://www.oecd.org/en/topics/urbanisation-infrastructure-and-development.html  

Olander, Eric. (2025). China Tops Favorability Rankings in Africa, Outpacing U.S. and EU, New Survey Shows. China Global South Project. Retrieved on February 25 th , 2026, from https://chinaglobalsouth.com/2025/06/05/china-most-favored-global-power-in-africa/.

Otele, Oscar. (2021). China’s Approach to Development in Africa: A Case Study of Kenya’s Standard Gauge Railway. Council on Foreign Relations. Retrieved March 3 rd , 2026, from https://www.cfr.org/sites/default/files/pdf/Otele_A%20Case%20Study%20of%20Kenya%E2%8 0%99s%20Standard%20Gauge%20Railway.pdf

Stanley, Andrew (2023). The African century. Finance & Development. International Monetary Fund. Retrieved February 24 th , 2026, from https://www.imf.org/en/publications/fandd/issues/2023/09/pt-african-century.

Sun, Yun. (2013). China in Africa: Implications for U.S. competition and diplomacy. Brookings Institution. Retrieved March 1 st , 2026, from https://www.brookings.edu/articles/china-in- africa-implications-for-u-s-competition-and-diplomacy/

Vigers, Benedict. (2024). U.S. loses soft power edge in Africa. Gallup. Retrieved February 12 th , 2026, from https://news.gallup.com/poll/644222/loses-soft-power-edge-africa.aspx.

Zhao, Jinjing et al. (2025). Technology transfer and political alignment: new evidence from China’s outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) in Africa. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-025-05964-9