Description
How do material and doctrinal changes in EU partnership instruments affect African agency in international security? This paper contextualises the European Peace Facility (EPF) as a change of EU foreign policy instruments, in line with recent changes towards a more militarised and more interest-based foreign policy doctrine, with implications for security partnerships. This evolution reliably spells out the 'principled pragmatism' now firmly established in EU foreign policy doctrine. Yet African actors working towards collective security on the continent have consistently called for partners to support the achievement of African agency. We develop a theoretical argument on how African agency in security partnerships calls for autonomy in agenda-setting and shared decision-making in implementation. The empirical part of the paper critically introduces the design and initial activities of the EPF on the African continent. We find that the design, material capacities, and non-participatory governance of the EPF stand in stark to the aspiration of African agency. More broadly, the EPF also potentially undermines the EU's established principles of partnerships with Africa and the African Union in particular.
