18. IMPERIALIST RAW MATERIALS STRATEGIES IN EU POLITICS

Boniface Mabanza
Translated by Sally McPhail

2017 was declared ‘Africa year’ in Germany. As part of its G20 presidency, the federal government provided a focus with high media impact and in so doing responded to the challenges which have arisen from the new migration movements. More specifically, three federal ministries worked out different concepts which are in competition with each other.

They bore distinct names: Compact with Africa (Federal Ministry of Finance), Marshall Plan with Africa (Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development) and Pro! Africa (Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology). In all the diversity of their nuances, each of these three concepts ‘discovered’ Africa – as did their European counterpart, the Foreign Investment Plan – as a ‘continent of the future’, a ‘continent of opportunities’ which called for the mobilisation of private investment.