Description
The EU invests a considerable amount of funding in capacity-building to promote peace and prevent conflicts in « fragile » countries. Most debates on security assistance assume that a peaceful end-point can be reached if local actors’ capacities are strengthened. As a result, thousands of EU personnel have been deployed to train, monitor, and mentor local security institutions in countries such as Mali, Somalia, and Libya. Drawing on policy documents, interviews, and participant observation in three EU pre-deployment trainings, the article aims to unpack EU capacity-building activities in CSDP missions. I argue that the EU capacity-building discourses present the narratives of the African continent as dangerous and in need of external steering. The EU frames African officers as actors who need guiding and coaching because of a perceived lack of capacity, power and knowledge. Mentoring and advising are promoted as de-politicized mechanisms to transfer knowledge to the local counterparts, presenting the EU as a functional actor. The perceived lack of local capacities legitimizes an increasing engagement of the EU in fragile countries.
