Abstract:
Africa’s development and growth challenges will increasingly be shaped by Agenda
2063 and the African Continental Free Trade Area (CFTA) as new continental
blueprints for integration. These challenging blueprints must also be situated in
the role and shifting interests of Africa’s external trade and development partners.
This relates particularly to its historically‐defined engagements with the European
Union (EU) and the United States (US) which have only served to reinforce and
underscore Africa’s marginality and dependence. These engagements are rendered
more complex with the entry of China and India onto the African geo‐political
landscape, especially whether these two countries provide an alternate regime for
trade and development cooperation that give African countries greater decision‐
making agency, policy space, and strategic choice. Given these shifting vectors, this
article will assess Africa’s trade relations with two of its most important
traditional partners, the EU and the US; and with two of its most important
emerging partners, China and India. These analytical portraits have direct
implications for Africa’s future industrial development and economic growth and
the extent to which it can collectively move away from a history of external
dependence to determining its own destiny.
