We can solve our problems – African Union to European Union
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The African Union had a clear message for Brussels: We appreciate your interest, but we can solve our own problems, thanks, POLITICO reports.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen arrived in the Ethiopian capital Thursday with a large delegation from Brussels, including 20 commissioners, hoping to forge a new strategic partnership with the 55-country African Union. More concretely, they wanted to use their meetings with their AU counterparts to take a crucial step forward in drafting a new Africa strategy that Brussels is hastily putting together to debut next week.
Politico’s reports “While the AU leadership is happy to strengthen its ties with Europe, the body is more interested in its own Africa strategy. The buzz around the heavily repeated slogan of finding African solutions to African problems was hard to miss at the AU headquarters, be those rising insecurity in the Sahel or climate shocks in the east.
“A very important lesson: African solutions to African problems,” Frans Timmermans, vice president of the European Commission, told reporters after commissioners from the AU and EU had concluded their talks. “We should not now think we can reinvent the wheel from scratch.”
