Description
Some of the key but often forgotten issues dominating the European discussions surrounding the adoption of the Treaty of Rome in the 1957 revolved around a singular question: what to do with ‘our’ colonial possessions? More specifically, European unity was often read in Eurafrican terms, whereby the unification of Europe’s imperial powers was to help them maintain authority over the African continent. Although direct expressions of this important objective of European unification soon faded as the wave of decolonisation swept across the continent, the imperative to try and consolidate influence over Europe’s African frontiers remained. Development aid, soon funnelled through the newly formed European Development Fund (EDF), was one of the principal means through which such influence could be sustained.
Over 60 years later, the EDF also became the largest financial contributor to a new development tool designed to help manage African migration to Europe: the EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa. This paper retraces the historical links between the European continent’s historical integration process and the EUTF for Africa. Focusing on the role of EU member-state development organisations as some of the Trust Fund’s main implementing partners, I read the Trust Fund’s programmatic interventions as representing a reimagination of the old Eurafrican project. Whilst the specific ideals of the two eras differed, the EUTF and the Eurafrican project are united by a shared purpose: to manage and control African spaces situated on the frontiers of Europe.
