The nature of the relationship between the European Union (EU) and Africa is in permanent evolution. Historically, the EU mostly dominated the relationship while Africa developed adaptive/reactive strategies. With the establishment of new powers as well as efforts to decolonise the thought and practise of North-South interactions, it is crucial to understand what the future of the relationship could be. The purpose of this paper is to draw lessons from the “Broadening the debate on EU-Africa relations” workshop whose aim was to advance perspectives on EU-Africa relations from the point of view of African scholars. The process consisted of identifying major influential factors in the relationship and assessing what role they played in the past and what role they could play in the future. The results indicate a decline of the importance of EU-dominated factors and the emergence of African agency related factors. We interpret these results as a transformation of this relationship, using the concept “post-normal” to highlight indeterminacy, insolvability and irreversibility as the new context. Implications are discussed regarding the type of research that needs to be developed in order to further investigate this transformation, particularly the meaning of a shifting focus from (normal times) EU-Africa relationship to (post-normal times) Africa-EU relationships.

中文翻译：

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后正常时代：重新思考欧盟与非洲关系的未来

欧盟 (EU) 与非洲之间关系的性质在不断演变。从历史上看，欧盟主要主导这种关系，而非洲则制定适应性/反应性战略。随着新权力的建立以及南北互动思想和实践非殖民化的努力，了解这种关系的未来至关重要。本文的目的是从“扩大欧盟-非洲关系的辩论”研讨会中吸取教训，该研讨会旨在从非洲学者的角度推进对欧盟-非洲关系的看法。该过程包括确定关系中的主要影响因素，并评估它们过去扮演的角色以及未来可能扮演的角色。结果表明，欧盟主导因素的重要性下降，非洲机构相关因素的出现。我们将这些结果解释为这种关系的转变，使用“后常态”概念来强调不确定性、不可解决性和不可逆转性作为新的背景。讨论了关于需要开展的研究类型以进一步研究这种转变的影响，特别是将重点从（正常时期）欧盟-非洲关系转移到（后正常时期）非洲-欧盟关系的意义。