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On April 16 the Council of the European Union issued its ‘Conclusions on an EU Strategy for Cooperation in the Indo-Pacific.’ The EU policy paper announced a “meaningful European naval presence in the Indo-Pacific.” However, the meaning of that exact phrase on top of who, what, and when would be deployed to the region have yet to be further explained.

La connettività è da tempo in cima all’agenda dell’Unione europea che la definisce come “l’insieme delle infrastrutture fisiche e non fisiche attraverso cui beni, servizi, idee, informazioni e persone possono circolare senza ostacoli”. L’attenzione di Bruxelles si è a lungo concentrata sui trasporti, poiché influenzata dalla tipologia di investimenti e prestiti per lo sviluppo infrastrutturale in Europa degli ultimi anni, in primis quelli provenienti dalla Cina, a discapito degli altri tre pilastri della connettività: energia, connettività umana e digitale.

Set up in the benign environment of the post-Cold War period, the Forum on China Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) was a bold diplomatic initiative for China at the time and one which forged a path to ever closer relations. Twenty-one years on the world has changed in unexpected and profound ways, which put China-Africa ties under the spotlight once again. China’s rising stature on the global stage echoes the increasingly dominant economic position it holds across nearly all sectors on the continent.

China has a long history of engaging in Africa’s energy sector. The first Chinese hydropower station was completed in the 1960s. Known as the Kinkon hydropower station in Guinea, it was China’s first foreign aid project in Africa’s power sector, amongst other landmark infrastructure projects like the Tanzania-Zambia Railway (TAZARA) in that same period. However, Chinese aid was largely interrupted during the early stages of China’s economic reforms in the early 1980s, when strategic priorities shifted towards domestic economic development.