Lecture: "African Agency in Geopolitical Times: Playing with EU and China Ontological Security"
TIME: Wednesday, November 6, 4:00 – 5:00 pm
PLACE: Room GB 04/59, Ruhr-Universität Bochum

Guest Speaker: Dr. Niall Duggan, a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Government and Politics at University College Cork, where he teaches international relations, International Political Economy and Asian Politics. Dr. Duggan is a former lecturer at the Institute of East Asian Politics, Ruhr Universität Bochum and was the Acting-Chair of Modern Chinese Society and Economy at Georg-August-Universität Göttingen (GAUG). His main research focuses is emerging economies in global governance; international relations (IR) of the Global South; and China’s foreign and security policies, with a special focus on Sino-African and Sino-EU relations, EU-Africa relations.

Abstract
On 1 December 2021 the European Union (EU) launched the Global Gateway (GG). This new 300-billion EUR European strategy is intended to boost the EU's involvement in areas such as transport infrastructure, green energy, and digitalisation in developing countries. The African continent is expected to benefit with half of the expected figures. Much of the debate in the past few years has attempted to dissect the (geo) political, financial and economic dimensions of the GG from the perspective of Brussels and EU Member States´ policymakers. However, very little has been discussed on how African policymakers have perceived the GG. This paper will thus focus on how African agency within regional bodies – namely the African Union and African Development Bank - have approached the GG within the framework of Africa-EU relations. Moreover, it will compare this agency with that which has been displayed in the past decade of relations between Africa and China. Drawing on an ontological security analytical framework, the paper seeks to understand the new dynamics and contestations of African agency in the continent´s relations with the EU and China that have been ignored in both mainstream and critical approaches to EU foreign policy studies.