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The EU considers the promotion of regional integration a central pillar of its relations with the rest of the world, and as constituting an important element in its identity as a new global actor. It aims to mold the international system into a “community” based on the success of its own model, and for that reason has strongly contributed to the development of regional integration in several regions across the globe. The EU investment in the African integration initiatives has been particularly immense. It has supported Africa’s regional integration “project” with significant financial and technical resources particularly for the administrative and security capacities of the African Union (AU) and its Regional Economic Communities (RECs). But analysts have noted how the Africa-EU relations have often been characterized by asymmetry of power and resources which has served to reproduce and reinforce pre-existing colonial linkages between former colonizers (e.g. Belgium, France, the Netherlands and the UK) and their former colonies in Africa, so that the relations have constituted little other than “a tool of hegemony, strengthening the influence of the old continent” [1] on Africa. Thus, the EU-Africa relations are said to have disintegrative effects on the Africa, undermining integration initiatives underway in the continent.
This paper shows how the legacy of colonialism and its corollary of strong cleavages of former colonial powers, especially France, on their former colonies; the incongruence of EU interests with its stated objective of promoting regional integration and the objectives of local actors; the rigid pursuit of a formal, functional model of integration incompatible with the African political economy; and the EU’s inconsistency in the application of its stated policy instruments have conspired to undermine efforts at region-building in Africa. Thus, the paper observes that while regional integration is a ‘sine qua non’ for Africa’s socio-economic development, its place within the framework of EU-African relations must be reassessed, especially as the EU negotiates a new partnership agreement with the Africa, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries in anticipation of the expiry of the Cotonou agreement in 2020
