Brexit, EU & African Unity: Sovereignty Contests in Multi-Nation Union’s Public Management

Brexit, EU & African Unity:

Sovereignty Contests in Multi-Nation Union’s Public Management

Public Lecture - Respublica Literaria RS-CXXXIX-I, MMXVI, Vol. X No. VII

Costantinos Berhutesfa Costantinos, PhD

Professor of Public Policy, School of Graduate Studies,

College of Business and Economics, AAU

Abstract

The only certainty in all this is uncertainty –Brexit breeds uncertainty on the markets and uncertainty over the future of trade relations between the UK and Africa. A few notes can be summarised regarding Brexit’s impact on Africa and the process of African Unity that is taking shape following the mirror image of the EU. The dysfunctional nature of the EU is what led to the Brexit. The African Union Commission shares (if not even worse) that dysfunctionalism. This may alert African nations that are already fed-up nursing a dysfunctional AU to halt their contributions. Brexit might also affect UK’s leadership in the EU to promote advocacy for African development. The same principle applies to the EU's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Over the years, African farmers have constantly criticised the CAP for the subsidies it affords European farmers, which they argue undermine the concept of a level playing field. The UK was possibly the loudest voice for CAP reform within the EU.

Africa faces the usual panoply of challenges endemic in the Greater Horn of Africa (GHA) with too few in­struments and too few resources, while also grappling with the perennial problem of non-integration. These are sequencing of policy reforms, all subject to the political constraints of containing the disruptive impacts of policy reforms to acceptable levels. This is a particularly important problem for Africa given the very narrow margins for manoeuvre imposed by fiscal and external deficits, subsistence levels of household income for much of the population and a complex political weave in the regions social fabric. Getting the priorities right and managing change are thus particularly vital issues for African integration. Hence, Africa should modify regulatory policies that inflate business costs and depress urban consumer incomes, go for bolder and more unconventional agricultural policies and put in place a smarter set of policies for the financial sector.

The Fourth EU-Africa Summit, Roadmap 2014-2017 held 2-3 April 2014, Brussels on the theme of Investing in People, Prosperity and Peace, committed to enhance Africa-EU cooperation for the years to come. They confirmed that the Joint Africa-EU Strategy (JAES), adopted at the Lisbon summit in 2007, setting out the vision, values and principles to which we are committed, remains the strategic political reference for EU-Africa relations.

Key words: Brexit, Africa, EU, UK, Trade, aid, Union

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