[Interview] From aid donor to ‘geopolitical actor’: EU’s Africa diplomat on upgrading security cooperation

“Security in Africa and security in Europe are very much linked. I think we cannot look at the world as we used to look at some few years ago,” says Patricia Llombart Cussac, the managing director for Africa for the European External Action Service, the EU’s diplomatic corps. That’s a rebuke to those who think of ‘Fortress Europe’ and would prefer to think of the conflicts in the Horn of Africa and the Middle East as wars in far-flung regions that are of no interest to Europe. “This is a completely different vision from the European Union as a donor. This is the European Union as a geopolitical actor. And this is what the relationship we want to continue building with the countries,” she adds. Llombart Cussac, a former EU ambassador to Morocco, is hosting a three-day gathering of the EU’s 46 ambassadors across sub-Saharan Africa in Nairobi that started on Tuesday (10 November), where the aim was to reflect on how to strengthen what EU officials call the ‘strategic partnership’ between the bloc and Africa. Defence and security partnerships were top of the agenda as well as the bloc’s Global Gateway investment progamme. Picking Nairobi was no coincidence, says Llombart Cussac. Kenya is one of the EU’s closest partners in Africa and is a regional hub for east Africa, and also the EU’s diplomatic operations in the region. Dynamic cooperation Kenya also had a formal defence and security dialogue with the EU earlier in November. Throughout 2026, the EU and Kenya are celebrating the 50 years anniversary of diplomatic relations. Security cooperation with Kenya is “a dynamic area of our cooperation,” adds EU ambassador to Kenya, Andreas Peschke.