Britain & Africa: heading for the Brexit rocks

Dirk Kohnert

EconStor Preprints from ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics

Abstract: High-flying illusions on the part of the proponents and grim predictions of the sceptics characterize the controversy about Brexit. The article analyses five issues at stake for the Post-Brexit relationships between Britain, the EU and Africa with a focus on the Commonwealth Sub-Saharan Africa: market access, FDI, aid, security and partnership . The British government’s vision of a ‘Global Britain’ relies heavily on a reinforced co-operation with Commonwealth nations. However, most likely this would be possible only at the expense of the poor in Africa and elsewhere. Concerning security cooperation with Africa, London apparently exaggerated its defence input in order to enhance its bargaining position with the EU. It will be crucial for both the EU and the UK to find post-Brexit agreements to stem irregular migration and the growth of jihadist groups and terrorism. In a nutshell, the analysis of these different policy fields shows that expectations of Brexiteers and African politicians alike concerning an enhanced, partner-like Post-Brexit Commonwealth relationship are largely unfounded.

Keywords: Brexit; UK; Africa; EU; tariff policy; international trade; security; partnership (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F13 F2 F35 F36 F54 G15 G2 H26 N17 N47 N77 O17 P16 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr and nep-int
Note: Author's comprehensive version of an article forthcoming in Africa Spectrum, Vol. 53, No. 2 (2018), GIGA Journal Family, GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies, Hamburg, Germany.
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/181879/1/0 ... updated.30.08.18.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Britain & Africa: heading for the Brexit rocks (2018)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:esprep:181879

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in EconStor Preprints from ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().