Africa strategies

The Danish government published its new Africa strategy on 29 August 2007. The new strategy means a considerable increase of aid to Africa, a focus on climate changes and on Africa's big challenges: youth, equality and employment. The Danish government wants Africa to be part of globalisation as an equal, global partner.

Download a report on the public debates about the Danish Africa strategy (pdf).

On 1 April 2008, an Africa commission was established by the Danish government . The participants are politicians, business men and experts, whose task will be to restart the debate on how to meet Africa's challenges.
Read more on the Danish Africa commission at www.um.dk (in Danish).

The purpose of ‘Africa in Finnish Foreign Policy’ is to give an overview of Finnish foreign policy goals and ways of operation in relation to Africa. The main point of the foreign policy is that the activities in different segments serve the same foreign policy goals. Therefore, Finland aims at developing its Africa policy in a more integrated direction than before. All segments in foreign policy, i.e. foreign and security policy, development policy and development cooperation as well as trade policy should be used as instruments, and they have to serve the same foreign policy goals. Also, there has to be more consistency between the activities on the different levels, i.e. in the bilateral relations, when influencing EU policy and multilateral organisations.

Issues more closely related to peace and security, or to the political conditions of the countries, have long remained in the background. The time has come to pay greater attention to these issues, since the multidimensional character of Africa’s challenges requires an integrated policy.

As of 4 April 2011 public data and documents regarding information about development assistance are available on the website www.openaid.se. This kind of information was previously only disclosed upon request. Openaid.se forms part of the Swedish government’s transparency guarantee for development assistance. The guarantee means that the management of development assistance reports on the activities financed by development assistance and clearly explains how the assistance is being used.

A new Africa strategy was presented by the Swedish government on 12 March 2008. The strategy "has, as its point of departure, the positive changes that have taken place in Africa during the past decade and the development that has taken place as regards Africa's relations with the rest of the world, including with Sweden." On 9 June the proposed strategy was debated in the parliament. Read more and download the document at www.regeringen.se (in Swedish). Read a summary of a debate in the parliament on 9 June (in Swedish).

The social democratic opposition presented a counter-proposal to the Swedish parliament on 1 April.
Press release on the motion at the social democrats' website (in Swedish).
The entire motion is available at the Swedish parliament's website (in Swedish).

As a basis for its Africa strategy, the Swedish government (in 2007) commissioned the Nordic Africa Institute to develop a basis for discussions in the form of papers on five different themes. One of the papers, ‘Re-thinking Africa’, was written by the researchers at NAI. The five papers were published at the Swedish government's website, and readers were invited to debate the issues. The papers and the debate are available at www.sweden.gov.se/rethinkingafrica.

The paper by the NAI researchers, ‘Re-thinking Africa’, is about the ‘new’ Africa emerging, reflecting growing confidence in which African initiatives are taken to solve African problems. Trends related to democratisation, agrarian change, conflicts, urban dynamics, gender and HIV/AIDS are considered in depth.
Download ‘Re-thinking Africa’ (pdf).

A summary in Swedish of the researchers' paper, written by Birgitta Hellmark Lindgren, was published in autumn 2007 in the journal ‘Framtider’ (Institute for Futures Studies, Stockholm). The article ‘Vart är Afrika på väg’ ("Where is Africa heading?") can be downloaded at www.framtidsstudier.se.