For the year of 2020, Europe and Africa have set themselves an ambitious agenda for an ever stronger EU-Africa Partnership. The new President of the European Commission, Ms. Ursula von der Leyen, made her first official visit outside the EU to Addis Ababa underlining the EU’s strong commitment to advance the partnership.

Europe and Africa are united by a shared understanding of effective multilateralism and a rules-based international order, where the global challenges of our time are addressed collectively: peace and security, climate change, sustainable growth, digitization and migration – to name but a few.

When Covid-19 struck at the beginning of this year, it revealed in drastic ways how interconnected we all are. While the rapid spread of the pandemic has impacted all of us, it has not affected us in similar ways.

Proving the doomsayers wrong, with creative and rigorous measures so far many African countries such as Rwanda have been more successful in controlling the spread of the virus than a good number of economically powerful countries. However, the economic and social reverberations of the pandemic in Africa indeed have been devastating and will continue to be so.

For Europe’s partnership with Africa, the present crisis has reinforced our determination for closer cooperation, guided by a sense of shared responsibility and solidarity. In a joint Financial Times op-ed, Chancellor Angela Merkel and other African and European leaders have stated firmly: "Only a global victory that fully includes Africa can bring this pandemic to an end.”

As Germany assumed the Presidency of the Council of the European Union on July 1 for the next six months, Africa is at the heart of the EU’s global response to Covid-19, echoing the United Nations’ call to ‘build back better’. As ‘Team Europe’, we stand with our neighboring continent to respond to the immediate priorities of African states, societies and people in need in this crisis.

In making a strong commitment to ‘Team Europe’, Germany has taken extensive steps in the fight against Covid-19, for example by helping to build resilient health systems and mitigate the economic and social impact for people in Africa. Amongst other bi- and multilateral commitments: