Leaders of the European Union formally launched an emergency trust fund for Africa yesterday with an initial $2 billion to combat the poverty and conflicts driving migration to Europe.
The fund, unveiled at a summit with African leaders in Malta, currently consists largely of 1.8 billion euros ($1.93 billion) put up by the European Commission, the European Union executive, from the bloc’s central budget.
The Commission wants member states to match that, but few have pledged much so far.
The new money, which adds to some 20 billion euros annually donated to Africa by the EU and its 28 states, will finance projects ranging from training and small-business grants and combating food shortages to schemes directly aimed at cutting emigration and tackling radicalisation and other violence.
With Europeans’ attention now gripped by over half a million Syrians and others whose arrival has plunged the EU into crisis, memories have faded of the drowned Africans whose deaths in April prompted the Malta summit.
However, EU officials said African migration presents the greater long-term concern.
Among the biggest concerns in both Europe and Africa is the extent to which climate change, turning vast areas around the Sahara into desert, may set large sections of Africa’s fast-growing billion-plus population on the move, both within the continent and north across the Mediterranean.
The new EU fund will focus on areas affected by migration and drought in the Horn of Africa, the Sahel and North Africa.
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