On 7 and 8 April, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation hosted the first meeting of African and Spanish think tanks on the empowerment of African women and the Women, Peace and Security agenda. The meeting was organised by the State Secretariat for Foreign and Global Affairs, in collaboration with Casa África, and forms part of two political and foreign policy planning commitments approved by the Government a year ago: the Feminist Foreign Policy Guide and Focus Africa 2023, the action programme of the Third Africa Plan (2019).
The meeting was opened by the Director-General for Africa, Alicia Rico, who highlighted that the Ministry was providing the conditions for Spanish and African think tanks to get to know each other better and encouraged them to collaborate closely. At the closing session, the Director-General for Foreign Policy and Security, Federico Torres, welcomed the fact that the meeting had, at the very least, facilitated the creation of an informal network of think tanks and expressed his hope that it would become the foundation of a future African-Spanish think tank ecosystem.
During the meeting, the African think tanks called for Africans to be allowed to describe their own contexts, since “most policies to prevent and combat radicalisation in Mali and Niger are based on assumptions that research rarely confirms”. Participants also considered that a new phase was beginning in which joint research projects would be proposed through African-Spanish partnerships.
The Feminist Foreign Policy Guide represents a commitment to more effective Spanish action in support of transformative feminist agendas. One of the conclusions of the meeting was the importance of having applied research findings to guide cooperation initiatives and policies aimed at contributing to the empowerment of African women and those falling under the Women, Peace and Security priority. Furthermore, in accordance with Focus Africa 2023, this can only be achieved through the principle of partnership between Spaniards and Africans, based on mutual respect, equality and African leadership of their own processes.
Seven African think tanks took part: the Institute for Security Studies (ISS), based in Pretoria, with offices in Dakar, Bamako, Nairobi and Addis Ababa; the Timbuktu Institute, based in Dakar, with offices in Bamako and Niamey; the Organization for Social Science Research in Eastern and Southern Africa (OSSREA), based in Addis Ababa; the Groupe de Recherche et d’Analyse Appliquées pour le Développement (GRAAD), based in Ouagadougou; the African Economic Research Consortium (AERC), based in Nairobi; the West Africa Network for Peacebuilding (WANEP), based in Accra; and the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre (KAIPTC), also based in Accra. The six participating Spanish think tanks were Fundación Alternativas; the Elcano Royal Institute; CIDOB; Oxfam Intermón; the African Studies Group (GEA-UAM); and the Spanish Institute for Strategic Studies (IEEE).
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