So far, the relationship between the European Union and Africa has been a complicated one. Food producers have little opportunity to access the European market, which is protected through high food standards and the subsidization of farmers and farmland. On energy, Europe has been happy to look East rather than South, making Africa’s potential unexplored. In recent years, only China’s heavy economic involvement in the region sparked European lawmakers to take an interest in sub-Saharan Africa, but once again less from the viewpoint of equal business partners, but rather from the standpoint of competing international interest. The war in Ukraine will turn the tide on the African position. 

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