The budget that decides Europe's place in the world
Nairobi, 2034. Twelve heads of state are signing the decade's biggest trade and infrastructure pact—rail corridors, green hydrogen, critical raw materials, medicines manufactured for a continent of 1.9 billion people. The financing is Chinese and Gulf-led, with India leading the implementation. Europe's delegation watches from the second row, witnessing an agreement it wasn't asked to take part in.
This scenario looks increasingly plausible, but isn't yet inevitable. Whether or not it becomes reality rests on decisions being made now.
The external action budget is under threat
It's autumn 2026. The EU is negotiating its next seven-year budget—the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF)—which will determine what Europe can do in the world from 2028 to 2034. The external action budget is under threat. But the geopolitical stakes are greater than ever. Leaders are grappling with the question of whether Europe can afford to invest. But that’s the wrong question. They should be asking whether Europe can afford not to.
Europe's place in the world in 2034 won't only be determined by how much it spends at home, but by whether it is still a partner worth choosing. Nowhere is that clearer than in Africa: by the time the next MFF ends, Africa will be the fastest-growing consumer market on Earth, with the youngest workforce, the largest remaining build-out of ports, grids and rail, and the raw materials Europe's energy transition depends on. That is where the smart money is being invested.
The question is whether Europe will show up too.
Right now, Europe is facing economic and security headwinds which are threatening to eclipse long-term strategy. For example, across the bloc, national budgets are moving towards a narrow idea of security: defence. The threat on the eastern border is real. But security doesn’t rest on militarisation alone. It’s multi-faceted, including the armies that deter, the diplomacy that de-escalates, and the development that prevents crises from starting. Many Member States are investing heavily in the first and quietly cutting the third.
But cutting back now is risky. Europe's position in 2034 will be shaped far beyond its own borders: in the regions where global economic growth is accelerating, where health security is built at the source, and where lasting stability is anchored. That means that Europe must choose to engage.
Where Europe's prosperity is decided
The EU's external action budget builds the ports, customs systems and roads that make commerce possible. The benefits run in both directions: partner economies trade more, and European companies gain new markets. The same is true of the businesses those economies are built on. Healthy, stable economies are the ones that produce the local suppliers, distributors and skilled partners European firms need to operate there. Africa, home to the fastest-growing economies of the coming decade, is where most of those partnerships will be formed.
The border that stopped queuing
At Holili, on the Kenya–Tanzania border, a truck crossing used to take up to 23 hours. After European donors helped fund a one-stop border post, it takes under three. Across East Africa's fifteen-odd upgraded crossings, waiting times are down around 70% and the region saves an estimated $63 million a year. Those corridors run both ways: they carry the European goods East Africa buys. It is a pattern that holds across the continent: new research finds that every €1 of EU development assistance in Africa is associated with roughly €6.80 in additional European exports of goods and services.
Sources: European Commission; ODI Global
That growth will create opportunities, and African governments and businesses will choose which international players to partner with. Those choices are being made now. Europe is still Africa's largest trading partner, but it is also the one pulling back, and a partner that disengages today won't be on the shortlist tomorrow.
“We're already hard at work to become more independent. But this needs to remain a top priority in the years ahead. In concrete terms, this will mean more collaboration within the EU and forging new partnerships – for example with countries in Asia and Africa.”
—Tom Berendsen, Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs (August 2026)
Where Europe's security is decided
Some threats arrive as armies. Most don’t, instead taking shape in unanticipated ways over time. Instability builds slowly, in places where harvests fail, where young people have no work and where institutions fail the people they're intended to support. From there it travels: as disrupted trade routes and supply chains, as the terrorist networks that recruit where states have failed, as displacement.
The EU’s investment in international development works upstream of instability, helping to mitigate the conditions that enable it to emerge. It underwrites the drought response before it becomes a food crisis. It backs jobs that keep young people out of armed groups. And it strengthens the courts that settle disputes before weapons do. That early work is especially important because countries that fall into conflict rarely fall once: past conflict is the strongest predictor of future conflict, and breaking the cycle early is far cheaper than fighting it late.
Where security is decided
The cheapest way to reduce security threats is to fund the things that stop them from forming. Development funding directed to education is associated with a reduction in cross-border terrorist attacks of around 70%; funding for conflict prevention, health and civil society can reduce attacks by 30–40%. Schools, livelihoods and functioning services remove the conditions out of which instability grows—long before it becomes a threat that impacts Europe too.
Source: Global Nation and the Kiel Institute
“If you want that military spending to be as effective as possible, you will also have to invest in preventing that conflict from arising.”
— Alexander De Croo, Former Belgian Prime Minister (July 2026)
Where Europe's health is decided
Healthy populations are the foundation of stable regions, and health is where Europe’s investments abroad do their most visible work. The health systems it supports treat HIV, vaccinate children and provide the care that reduces child mortality, and their surveillance networks catch outbreaks while they are still regional. The COVID-19 pandemic taught Europe why that matters at home: disease doesn’t stop at borders, and the cheapest place to stop it is at its source.
Malaria, measured in working days
In 2005, malaria was costing Ghana's Obuasi gold mine an average of three working days per case — more than 7,000 lost shifts every month. A programme of indoor spraying and bed nets cut cases by 75% within two years, and the Global Fund, to which European governments are the largest contributors, scaled it up across Ghana. A workforce that loses 7,000 shifts a month is an economy—and European trade partner—that underperforms.
Sources: John Hopkins, Center for Communication Programs
That protection is being defunded. Investment in global health is falling faster than external action spending overall. The consequences are tangible: the first major Ebola outbreak since the United States dismantled its response capacity is showing in real time the costs of cutting critical investment.
Prosperity, security, health. These are what the external action budget buys, and what will keep both Europe and Africa stronger long into the future.
What needs to happen now
That influence is still Europe’s to keep — if leaders make the right choices in the next 7-year budget. Europe has an incredible opportunity to make a strategic investment that will pay big dividends far into the future.
The EU's next 7-year budget must:
- safeguard the €200.3 billion Global Europe envelope as the bare minimum;
- reinstate the ≥20% human development target, safeguarding the EU’s future investments in health, education and social protection;
- and commit to a minimum level of investment in sub-Saharan Africa over the next 7 years.
That would lead to a different Nairobi 2034 scenario. As 12 heads of state sign the decade's biggest trade and infrastructure pact, Europe's delegation is at the table, because it never left. Rail corridors are stable because joint EU-Africa partnerships helped keep them so. The medicines will supply clinics Europe never stopped investing in, manufactured by local companies, backed by European financing and technology. The ports the pact relies on were upgraded to facilitate an increased flow of goods between both continents.
Europe’s global position in 2034 is being decided in Brussels, this autumn, in a single budget line.
The data concerning 3D spending in European countries is drawn from previous ONE research, The Security Paradox: More Defense, Less Stability? Europe appendix.
The data on ODA and health ODA is from the ONE ODA dashboard, where ODA data is retrieved from the OECD Data Explorer API. We used the “sector” tab of the dashboard, considering as donors all bilateral donors or EU27 countries to ODA eligible countries, using as indicator bilateral + imputed multilateral.
The data on African countries imports from different partner countries are from the Trade Explorer dashboard by ONE, where trade data is retrieved from BACI: International trade database at the Product-level. From the dashboard we considered African countries and US, UAE, EU, Russia, Turkey, China as partners and used the exports and imports of all products from 2004 to 2024.
Figures and case studies
The projection of about 1.9 billion people living in Africa in 2034 is from the UN Population division Data portal, World Population Prospects (1,872,848,566 inhabitants).
The “11 out of 15 of the fastest growing countries anywhere are expected to be on the African continent” statistic is drawn from the IMF World Economic Outlook from October, 2025.
The sources for Key data “The border that stopped queuing” are the papers: European Commission, EU Aid for Trade Progress Report 2023; ODI Global, One-stop border posts in East Africa, 2023. The “1€ in development assistance in Africa is associated with roughly €6,80 in European exports” is drawn from the research Every €1 of EU development spending in Africa linked to €6.80 in European exports – new study shows, from ODI Global.
The source for Key data “Where security is decided” (is the study from Global Nation and the Kiel Institute, Identifying Mutual Interests: How Donor Countries Benefit from Foreign Aid, June 2025.
The “every dollar invested in prevention averts up to $103 in future conflict costs” statistic is drawn from previous ONE research, Conflict Prevention is 100 Times Less Costly than Crisis Response (the original source is the IMF Working Paper The Urgency of Conflict Prevention – A Macroeconomic Perspective by Hannes Mueller, Christopher Rauh, Benjamin R. Seimon, Raphael A. Espinoza)
The sources for Key data “Malaria, measured in working days” is the case study AngloGold Ashanti Iduapriem Mine Case Study from Private Sector Malaria Prevention, by John Hopkins, Center for Communication Programs.
The €200.3bn for Global Europe is drawn from the European Commission proposal for the 2028-34 Multiannual Financial Framework (“MFF”) document.