The European Investment Bank in Sub-Saharan Africa: constrained expansion

ABSTRACT

Exploring the European Investment Bank’s (EIB) largely unexplored external operations, this article provides the first comprehensive analysis of the EIB’s activity in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) from its inception in 1957 up to 2024. The contribution enriches the discourse on re-aligning the European Financial Architecture for Development, by outlining the EIB’s inter-institutional considerations and its policy implications for both EU and SSA stakeholders. The findings reveal a “constrained expansion”, shaped by a mix of enablers such as EU geopolitical interests and a financialization-centric vision of development, and constraints including the Bank’s risk-aversion and increased competition with other development finance institutions.

KEYWORDS:

• European financial architecture for development
• European Investment Bank
• Sub-Saharan Africa
• European Union
• development aid
• financialization
• development banks
• credit ratings
• Wall street consensus

Acknowledgment

I am grateful to the interviewees who shared their knowledge with me, the editors of the special issue, and the three anonymous reviewers for their extremely helpful suggestions. I thank Jan Orbie, Mattias Vermeiren, Toni Haastrup and Ueli Staeger for their valuable comments on earlier drafts, and the organizers and participants of the panel “Resourcing International Organizations” of the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) Joint Sessions 2023 for the productive exchange.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Translated by author from Dutch.

2. Comparing the legal basis for EIB operations in ACP countries with EU overseas territories, there’s a clear distinction. For EU overseas territories, the legal basis was defined and accepted within the framework of EU Treaties, providing a legitimate platform for EIB activities. In contrast, for ACP countries like Togo, Cameroon and Somaliland, the legal basis is not defined in the EU Treaties.

3. These countries are: Cuba, Eritrea, Equatorial Guinea, Guyana, Maldives, Nauru, Nigeria, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, and Tuvalu.

4. Listed by the United Nations in 2023.

5. Inflation adjusted to 2015 euros.

6. Figure 8 shows in how many country programmes (MIP) a development bank has been stipulated as involved in a project.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by FWO under Grant [11H4324N]; https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3512-4452; https://twitter.com/Anissa_Bougrea; The author reports there are no competing interests to declare. The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in Zenodo at http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6802419, http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8188740, and http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10578601.