The European Peace Facility and African agency how the EU's changing foreign policy doctrine affects African security

The European Union's geopolitical turn has transformed how it finances and projects security abroad, above all through the European Peace Facility (EPF). This article argues that in Africa, the redesign of EU security financing reshapes and constrains African Union (AU) agency within an already asymmetrical partnership. We draw on an extensive range of documents and interviews to show how African agency in security partnerships hinges on autonomy in agenda-setting and shared decision-making in implementation. The creation of the EPF, spurred by geopolitical concerns, negatively impacts the exercise of African agency by the AU, which is the region's continental security actor. This diminished agency is produced through three mechanisms: militarization, bilateralization and decisional exclusion. While African agency has always had declaratory support from Brussels, and in light of Africa as a geopolitical priority, we conclude that the EPF actually risks eroding the EU's established principles of partnership and regional security in Africa, and especially with respect to the AU. We underscore how the exercise of African agency is shaped by external opportunity structures that enable, channel or constrain how African preferences can be articulated and pursued.