Two Continents, One Conference Room, and a Whole Lot of Agenda Items
Pack your bags for Eswatini, folks—the Africa-EU Parliamentary Assembly is about to kick off its inaugural plenary session, and it’s shaping up to be quite the diplomatic shindig. From May 12-14, African and European parliamentarians will gather at the impressively named Ezulwini Palazzo International Convention and Conference Centre (try saying that three times fast) to tackle everything from security to critical raw materials.
The guest list? Pretty impressive. Prime Minister Russell Mmiso Dlamini, Prince Lindani, and co-presidents Hilde Vautmans from Belgium and David Houinsa from Benin will be there to get things rolling. No pressure, but they’ve only got three days to solve youth mobility, women in agriculture, multilateralism, and oh yeah, that whole “global race for critical raw materials” thing. Light work, really.
The agenda reads like a greatest hits of contemporary geopolitical challenges: peace and security, parliamentary diplomacy, and how to keep young people from fleeing their countries. They’ll wrap up by sending recommendations to the Africa-EU Council of Ministers—because nothing says “we mean business” like a strongly worded recommendation.
For any journalists wondering if they can crash the party, there’s a press point scheduled for Tuesday morning at 9:00 AM. Show up early, grab your coffee, and prepare for some high-level diplomatic speak about cooperation, partnership, and other words that sound important in press releases.
Who knows? Maybe they’ll actually figure out how to share those critical raw materials without anyone getting too critical about it.