EU-Africa Relations and the Coloniality of Money: Analysing funding and financing

Coloniality in EU-Africa relations is an increasingly uncontested social fact. Scholars, diplomats and practitioners commit to the idea of an ‘equal partnership’. This paper contends that this is a superficial, false consensus and that there are multiple levels of ambition about decolonization. Not all of these fully reflect the persistent colonial legacies within EU-Africa inter-regional relations. We focus on how these legacies shape power dynamics, decision-making processes, and institutional practices in EU-Africa funding and financing. Employing a decolonial lens, we scrutinise how these institutions operate on and reproduce Eurocentric worldviews and power imbalances, despite a seasonable rhetoric simultaneously advocating for equity and geopolitical pragmatism. Our theoretical framework situates coloniality in the broader context of modernity, critiquing the colonial and postcolonial construction of knowledge. We discuss the coloniality of knowledge, being, nature and power, illustrating how Eurocentric political practices legitimise ongoing colonial projects and perpetuate racial and economic hierarchies through the vehicle of money-based partnerships. The paper innovatively combines deep critical theory on decolonization with an empirically informed analysis of three aspects of EU-Africa relations: institutions and institutional constellations, rules and standards, as well as diplomatic and bureaucratic practices. Our case studies include the Organization of African, Caribbean, and Pacific States (OACPS), the EU-African Union (EU-AU) partnership, and the European Investment Bank (EIB). In combining detailed empirical case studies with a close re-reading of debates on coloniality and decolonization, we argue that understanding the interplay of money, power, and coloniality is vital. Not just to understand the historicity of EU-Africa relations, but also to reveal the pernicious obstacles to improved intercontinental cooperation today. We contend that genuine decolonization requires profound changes in power dynamics, cautioning against the unintended effects of superficial decolonization efforts within EU-Africa relations.