Success stories
One of the issues facing European Commissioner Louis Michel when he took office was how to express in concrete terms the considerable sums allocated to cooperation with ACP countries: €13.5 billion for the period 2002–2007 and €22.6 billion for 2008–2013. A closer look behind the figures shows a number of undeniable successes in EU-ACP cooperation.
Activité commercial, Bamako 2007
© Afrique in visu - Baptiste de Ville d'Avray
A case in point is Mauritius, a principal beneficiary of the Sugar Protocol. By being paid considerably more than the going global rate for its sugar exports to the EU, the country has been able to diversify its economy into textiles, tourism and service industries. Furthermore, the free and non-reciprocal access to European markets for Mauritian textiles has seen the manufacturing sector take off. Also, the European Investment Bank (EIB) has financed innovative technologies to make the most of local resources like the Bellevue coal-bagasse combined cycle power station.
In the Seychelles, EDF money has been targeted at improving living conditions among the local population. Equally, in its July/August 1997 edition, The Courier highlighted the positive results of this cooperation in Barbados, a country which has invested heavily in people and now enjoys a higher human development index than some European countries. A success story that is down to local leadership with the wisdom to allocate European funds to education, both university and skills teaching, which has produced a workforce trained for growth sectors like tourism and communication technologies.
In Congo-Brazzaville, Liberia and Djibouti, EU funds have been used to distribute that most precious of all commodities – peace. This is thanks to the financing of programmes for the demobilisation and rehabilitation of combatants after civil wars. In Mali, the European Commission recorded a major success by financing development programmes in the north of the country that also played a role in preventing conflict by making the people involved understand that the government of Bamako and the EU didn’t mean them to be left behind in their quest for a better day-to-day existence. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, the supervision of democratic elections by EUFOR was another sign that EU Member States’ aid can make a significant and lasting impact on a nation.
Countries such as Tanzania, Rwanda and many others are indebted to the EU for the construction of their main trunk roads. In Liberia too, the EU contributed to reconstruction by financing the re-establishment of the electricity grid after the civil war. In Uganda and St Vincent, the EU has invested in the renovation of school buildings.
All these examples are testimony to the diversity of sectors, actions and countries – the on-the-ground ‘theatres’ of ACP-EU cooperation. A more complete round up should include the fact that the number of African countries which have held pluralistic elections has risen from 3 to 40 between 1973 and 2005, with, in the majority of cases, European support. Another example: thanks to the Centre for the Development of Enterprise (CDE), the Ethiopian company Dire Industries multiplied its production of shoes by 16 to 2,500 pairs a day between 2004 and 2007 and its staff has grown five fold over the same period.
The EU’s and other donors’ interventions have helped the enrolment in African primary schools to rise from 72% to 93% in 2004. The EU’s and other donors’ focused attention on HIV/AIDS is also beginning to pay off. In the last two years, 28 of the 36 countries reporting data are showing reductions over time in HIV prevalence.
