Global gateway to nowhere. The EU plan aims to improve relations with Africa and limit China's influence, but it does neither.

European development aid has entered a new phase of neocolonialist agenda under the banner of the European Union. Its plan "Global Gateway" presents infrastructure projects that European companies are to implement worldwide, supported by liberal reforms that will prepare the ground in target countries. It focuses especially on Africa, where at least half of all investments are to be directed.

European technocratic institutions in Brussels introduced the Global Gateway strategy as a "branding" project for a new direction of European aid in the world. (In the European Commission, it falls under the portfolio of international partnership, which has been led by Jozef Síkela since last year – ed. note). It was a response to the cracks revealed by the COVID-19 pandemic in European supply chains. In practice, the plan aims to secure access to raw materials and energy to reduce dependence on Chinese mineral resources and Russian gas. It is thus intended to compete with China's global investments in infrastructure known as the Belt and Road Initiative and with Russia's growing geopolitical influence.

Many projects in renewable energy and hydrogen are designed more to enable Europe to import energy than to provide affordable renewable energy to local communities.

The main goal from 2021 to 2027 is to mobilize global investments amounting to 300 billion euros, of which 150 billion euros are allocated for Africa. However, it didn't take long for details to emerge indicating that the EU not only did not allocate new financial resources but that these billions are to be obtained through old tools – specifically loans from multilateral development banks and EU member states. Projects financed by these loans are now being renamed under the Global Gateway. To incentivize these investments, the European Union allocated a budget of 53 billion euros. These will go toward guarantees, i.e., forms of insurance paid out to banks in case of project failure, which is quite rare. Only 18 billion euros are allocated for grants in the budget. But even these funds will help European corporations.

These amounts pale in comparison to the sum of 1.17 trillion dollars that China has already invested in the New Silk Road – nearly four times the amount the EU plans to invest within Global Gateway. Additionally, the European Court of Auditors has expressed doubts whether the EU can actually mobilize this amount.

In other words, Europe claims to support global development without actually allocating new or significant financial resources for much-needed infrastructure investments in low-income countries. It resembles a farce about "billions to trillions" of the World Bank and G7, which aims to attract private investments into so-called development projects – often structured to create opportunities for corporate profits. To sell this offer to the rest of the world, Global Gateway is promoted as a package of quality initiatives rooted in European "values and principles". But at a time when European countries are cutting already insufficient development budgets and instead prioritize military spending, migration management, and "competitiveness" of their clean technologies, Global Gateway is establishing itself as a new tool for promoting European geopolitical interests – masked as development financing.

Draining resources as in the old days

Global Gateway advocates privatization and liberalization – similar to European neoliberal trade agreements, which have a dramatic impact on local labor markets and various economic sectors. In energy, this will mean more opportunities for European companies to implement renewable energy projects such as solar power plants. With support from European development funds, they are meant to compete with significantly cheaper Chinese alternatives.

In reality, however, it will help drain resources into Europe. Many projects in renewable energy and hydrogen are designed more to enable Europe to import energy than to provide affordable renewable energy to local communities. The African continent faces an energy shortage, with 600 million people in sub-Saharan Africa lacking access to electricity. The flagship of Global Gateway is the construction of the SouthH2 Corridor, a 3,300 km hydrogen pipeline from North Africa to Germany and Italy. During the European energy crisis in 2022, it was promoted under the guise of "energy security" and supported by fossil fuel corporations. In practice, it will exploit African land, water, and labor to satisfy Europe's energy greed.

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This extractivist path is to be paved by 11 logistical corridors, which have little value for African regional trade routes but will create a backbone for European resource extraction. A prime example is the Lobito corridor in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Zambia, and Angola. This project, supported by the G7 – including the Trump administration – aims to enable rapid transportation of raw materials mined at very low costs by multinational companies from local mines. Such mining is characterized by exploitative working conditions, displacement of residents, human rights violations, and environmental destruction. A joint venture, holding a 30-year concession for modernizing and operating an old colonial railway, involves companies entangled in various scandals. An example is the multinational Trafigura, which trades commodities and is linked to extensive corruption scandals in Angola, Brazil, and a billion-dollar fraud in Mongolia.

New European investment projects pretend to bring added value to target countries. But in reality, they are not designed to support local manufacturing capacities, involve African companies, transfer technology and know-how, or create quality jobs. International and Kenyan trade unions estimate, for example, that the Global Gateway project planning to introduce a rapid bus system in Nairobi could threaten half of the approximately 70,000 workers in the current local transport system. This project will likely also secure a market for electric buses manufactured in Europe and financed by European "development" loans.

Global Gateway does not relieve recipient countries of the debts incurred in connection with these projects. By its nature, it often impacts official actors – often African politicians and companies that will award contracts to European firms and their subsidiaries. A key tool of Global Gateway is the so-called public-private partnership (PPP). This allows national payment obligations not to be included in accounting. It supports a project model that increases government costs, which have limited access to loans.

In simple terms, Global Gateway aims to persuade countries of the global South to take loans for projects they do not need, citing supposed benefits from which they will practically gain nothing. This very conveniently allows European countries to continue centuries-old strategies based on exploitation and to avoid reforms in debt and fair trade that would truly release resources for countries of the global South.

Insuring mainly European profits

It is evident that Europe cannot compete with Chinese investments. Chinese discourse promotes local added value much more ambitiously. For example, within the China-Africa Cooperation Vision 2035 presented in 2021, China committed to helping develop "Made in Africa" brands and support the local manufacturing sector. In 2023, the Chinese government announced the creation of 25 industrial parks with Chinese funding in Africa. In contrast, the EU's communication about Global Gateway focuses exclusively on supporting European companies. Chinese infrastructure investments undoubtedly pose problems in due diligence, geopolitical influence, and debt of African countries – which could make European financing more attractive. But even in projects, risks of this type are beginning to appear. The partnership in raw materials that Europe has established with Rwanda within Global Gateway remains valid, despite UN accusations that Rwanda smuggles resources from the Democratic Republic of Congo, where it is also involved in armed conflict. This undermines Europe's carefully constructed narrative of high standards for Global Gateway, which are supposed to distinguish it from China's New Silk Road.

Europe faces limits of its neoliberal economic model, which manifests in energy crises or greed for resources to boost industrial production and competitiveness. Making Africa pay for European prosperity resembles an old colonial model, including dragging this continent into conflicts of its own.

The simple truth is that global justice cannot be replaced by another plan of exploitation disguised as development and sold as debt. Instead of European development funds going to their own companies, they should guarantee real risks. These include crop failures caused by the climate crisis, lack of affordable sustainable energy, or missing local manufacturing capacities and new technologies – not the concerns of wealthy European shareholders seeking high returns.

Instead of signing agreements with presidents, it is time for a radical shift of power from European metropolises to the global South, which should focus on the demands of local actors such as unions and civil society.

The author is a researcher and publicist based in Brussels.

The author is the head of the Africa Platform secretariat.

From the English original "The global gateway to nowhere" published on the website Africa Is a Country, translated by Petra Jelínková.