NICK OKOI
The European Commission pledged in July 2024 to develop a new foreign economic policy. This ambition has become more pressing in light of United States’ President Donald Trump’s ‘America First’ trade policy, showcasing disruptive shift in global economic relations. The new Trump’s administration stated aim is to bring back manufacturing jobs, rebuild the U.S. industrial base, and ensure a broad range of critical value chains.
Trump’s 2.0’s ‘reciprocal tariffs’ could lead more European Union (EU) companies to move production to the US. In fact rump’s 2.0’s challenge to global trade exacerbates existing threats to Europe’s security, competitiveness, crisis resilience and sovereignty. Analysts say the European Commission’s forthcoming Foreign Economic Policy is expected to integrate three existing work streams: economic security, trade policy, and investment partnerships. It is already playing out with EU’s excessive focus on foreign policy issues at the expense of its own socio-economic problems.
The EU has long struggled with critical over-dependencies. During Covid-19 pandemic soaring global demand combined with lockdown-induced disruptions led to acute shortages of critical goods such as medical face masks. To address these vulnerabilities, the European Commission unveiled the European Economic Security Strategy (EESS) in2023.
Despite these efforts, Europe’s dependencies have reportedly grown. It currently faces several socio-economic challenges, including rising inequality, economic insecurity, and the impact of demographic shifts like an aging population. Even now, its economic security has gained limited traction in most member States. Many observers see the Commission’s economic security as a reactive approach that strives to protect Europe by means of defensive measures.
Despite its economic challenges, the European Union is increasingly using the tool of international partnerships to achieve its strategic objectives. The Global Gateway, (GG), the EU’s flagship investment launched in 2021, is often perceived as a response to China’s ‘Belt and Road’ Initiative’ (BRI) . Since it was launched in 2013, Chinese companies implement the vast majority of BRI projects, including for railway infrastructure, using Chinese technical standards.
This often leaves recipient nations dependent on these firms, many of which maintain close ties to the Chinese government, for ongoing maintenance and future infrastructure development. The resulting technological lock-in deepens dependencies and strengthens China’s political clout The EU knows it can not counter the scale or the strategy of the BRI through development assistance alone. Therefore it positioned itself as a strategic investor through its Global Gateway strategy.
By addressing the needs of partner countries while pursuing its own strategic interests, the Global Gateway reflects a significant shift in how the EU conducts its external action in an increasingly competitive environment. It embodies the EU’s efforts to assert its socioeconomic model prominently, especially in Africa. The GG projects are currently being implemented in 37 out of the 60 countries classified as fragile by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) multidimensional fragility framework.
Among the key priorities in Africa are various transport corridors, as highlighted by the European Commission. These corridors aim to ‘’support investment in sustainable, efficient, and safe connectivity between the continents, thereby developing value-chains that benefit industries both in Africa and Europe.’’ Observers are asking who is really benefiting from the Gateway?
Africa represents the primary geographical focus of this financial strategy. Through Team Europe, 150 billion Euros in investment will be delivered. This means that the EU, its member States, and key European financial institutions will jointly support projects in priority areas that have been mutually identified.
Analysts point out that a notable omission is the limited emphasis on education and training, which is presented as one of the last priority areas and lacks detailed elaboration. The African investment package allocates 970million Euros to the Youth Mobility for Africa program, which aims to promote youth exchange and mobility both within Africa and between Africa and Europe.
The EU limited emphasis on education may lie in the EU’s stated goal to ‘’develop value chains that benefit industries both in Africa and Europe.’’ Many observers believe that the Global Gateway is an EU soft power strategy that may benefit the European actors more than their African counterparts. They cite Kenya’s case, a country often portrayed as a digital front runner in Africa.
While the Global Gateway aligns with Kenya’s Ten-Year National Digital Master Plan, supporting digital infrastructure and human-centered digitalization through Team Europe Initiative, the dynamics reveal an asymmetry of benefits. On paper, both sides gain: Kenya upgrades its digital systems, while European actors secure access to a growing tech market, and test grounds for regulatory export.
However, concerns over digital sovereignty arise, as the EU frequently promotes its own standards, particularly in data governance and Artificial Intelligence, AI, ethics, without sufficiently adapting them to local contexts. Despite Kenya’s innovation potential, EU’s funding continues to favor foreign-led initiatives, marginalizing local entrepreneurs and reinforcing existing structural inequalities.
This reflects a broader pattern in the Global Gateway: while it presents itself as a partnership for sustainable development, its priorities often tilt toward European geopolitical and economic interests, leaving behind the foundational needs, such as inclusive education and digital literacy, that are essential for lasting transformation.
In light of this evidence, the European Union’s Global Gateway comes less as a transformative development strategy and more as a strategic rebranding of long-standing asymmetries in EU-Africa relations. While it introduces novel mechanisms and rhetoric grounded in sustainability and shared values, its implementation reveals critical contradictions that showcase the EU as an unreliable partner that is using a neo colonial approach in its relations with Africa.
*Nick Okoi writes from MInna,Niger state