Sovereignism, neo-colonialism and African states’ discontent with geopolitical Europe in the era of the OACPS-EU Samoa Agreement

EU officials have praised the Samoa Agreement as an essential partnership of equals between the European Union (EU) and the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States (OACPS).The Agreement is lauded for its ostensible shift away from focus on aid and trade towards ambitious shared political objectives relating to human rights, democracy, security, environmentalism and migration.Applying the concepts of sovereignism and neo-colonialism, however, the article explains how African officials remained highly anxious to defend political, cultural and economic sovereignties against perceived European intrusions during the negotiations.It then underscores two divergent African state responses to a highly flawed Agreement.First, non-alignmentunderstood to involve African actors' refusal to implement the Samoa Agreement while holding out for new concessions and/or new partnerships.Second, discontentunderstood to involve reluctant acquiescence to the new 'partnership', while engaging in discursive political contestations of European agendas concerning human rights, aid delivery, free trade, and resource extraction in Africa.Building upon elite interviews conducted with African officials, it illustrates the discursive contours of this sovereignist discontent.