• Sustainable Finance

The Road from Seville to the 7th AU-EU Summit in Luanda

  • The Africa-Europe Foundation

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At AEF, we are proud to have partnered on the once-in-a-decade 4th International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4) and to have been selected to join the Sevilla Action Platform.

Many thanks to all the partners who engaged in AEF’s programme for FfD4 in Seville, from our frank dinner debate among AU and EU Leaders to strategic dialogues on Tax, Combatting Illicit Financial Flows, and Unlocking Africa-Europe Cooperation on Carbon Markets and Blue Finance.

Our focus is now on the follow-up. Leveraging the momentum for a new paradigm in development-cooperation and driving key outcomes in the lead-up to November’s G20 Summit in South Africa and African Union-European Union Summit in Angola.

AEF ED Paul Walton, AUDA-NEPAD CEO Nardos Bekele-Thomas and EU Commissioner, Jozef Síkela
Cristina Duarte UN Special Adviser on Africa and Under-Secretary-General of OSAA
Moderating, Isabelle Durant, Member of the AEF High Level Group of Personalities

Five takeaways from AEF at FfD4:

  • Focusing on Domestic Resource Mobilisation (DRM) and Combatting Illicit Financial Flows (IFFs).  This has gained increased political traction in 2025 and is key to shifting the Africa-Europe partnership paradigm from an outdated model of development-cooperation. Focusing on DRM and combating IFFs includes investing in digitalisation and enhancing institutional capacities to track, analyse, and act on financial data to stem illicit flows.

  • Catalysing Capital Flows. Geopolitical realignments and the scale and urgency of domestic and regional economic and social challenges demand new models of co-investment and tackling bureaucratic aspects. Leading to project delays and fragmentation.  Our research and partnership work expose that there are actors ready to align incentives, commit capital, and execute, but Europe has not yet fully recognised Africa’s strategic relevance.

  • Forming Coalitions of the Willing. Continent-to-continent consensus-building is more challenging in the current geopolitical context, and there are strategic opportunities to facilitate coalitions of AU/EU champion countries to drive financial reforms and catalyse investment in priority sectors. Untapped domains of Africa-Europe cooperation, as captured at FfD4, include Carbon Markets and Blue Finance.

  • Translating Commitments into Action. As part of AEF’s work on tracking AU-EU policy and finance commitments, we are monitoring the implementation of FfD4. This includes commitments on debt burdens (the Debt Swaps for Development Hub, the conversion of African debt into development investments, and the Debt Pause Clause Alliance) and mobilising investment (the Global Solidarity Levies coalition, the SCALED platform, and new technical assistance hubs to support project preparation and delivery).

  • Investing in trust-building. Our partnership at FfD4 reaffirmed the importance of continuing to provide a safe space for frank exchange on the complex (and sometimes contentious) issues of cross-continental cooperation. As a senior delegate underlined at our closed-door dinner in Seville, “there remains the risk of designing the wrong business models for cooperation due to faulty perceptions of each other”. Trust remains key to catalysing cooperation and building a transformative Africa-Europe partnership.

We look forward to taking this all forward together, from Seville to Luanda.