The Samoa Agreement and neo-colonialism in the Caribbean
Caribbean Organisation for Peoples Empowerment Caribbean
By A.T. Freeman
On 15 November 2023, the signing ceremony for the Partnership Agreement between the European Union (EU) and its Member States and the Members of the Organisation of the African, Caribbean and Pacific States (OACPS) took place in Apia, the capital of Samoa. The agreement, which is generally referred to as the Samoa Agreement, is a legally binding document between, on the one hand, the member states of the EU and the EU itself and, on the other, the member states of the OACPS. In essence, the document attempts to give legally binding force to the political demands of the EU on the OACPS member states which want to access loans from the European Investment Bank (EIB).
Background to the Samoa Agreement
Although negotiations on the Samoa Agreement began in 2018, the process that produced it dates back to 1957. In that year, the Treaty of Rome was signed establishing the European Economic Community (EEC), the forerunner of the EU. In light of this unification, the newly formed EEC considered it necessary to make new arrangements with regard to their colonial territories. At that time, these were primarily French colonial territories in Africa. As the EEC expanded, eventually developing into the EU, this process also developed and produced the 2 Yaoundé Conventions, 4 Lomé Conventions and the Cotonou Convention which was signed in 2000 and expired in 2020.
The Samoa Agreement is the most recent document in this series and is intended to replace the Cotonou Agreement. Like its predecessors, it is driven primarily by the imperial interests of the EU which sets its political and economic direction. For example, the OACPS excludes the North African countries of Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt reflecting Europe’s longstanding racist division of Africa into so-called North Africa and “black Africa” or “sub-Saharan Africa”. Furthermore, the OACPS Secretariat is funded completely by the EU and is located not in Africa, the Caribbean or the Pacific, but in Brussels, the capital of Belgium.
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