The Lobito Corridor and Local Voices

Sammanfattning

This thesis research how the EU’s shift from traditional development aid to investment-based development cooperation affects the understanding and practice of ownership within Global Gateway. Through a case study of the Lobito Corridor, with a special focus on Zambia, it analyses how local development priorities are translated, reshaped and limited within the EU’s institutional and financial structures. The study is built on a critical policy analysis of central EU documents, the Lobito Corridor cooperation framework and Zambia’s 8th National Development Plan, supplemented with semi-structured interviews with experts at different levels, including think tank representatives, EU institutional actors and a field worker from an NGO. The analysis shows that Global Gateway formally emphasises partnership, sustainable development and partner-country ownership, but that its practical governance is shaped to a high degree by the EU’s strategic interests, financial instruments and the need to mobilise private investment. In the Lobito Corridor, several African development needs coincide with EU interests, especially within transport, trade, energy and regional integration. At the same time, the focus on bankable projects, guarantees and blended finance creates a situation where partner countries’ room for manoeuvre is limited to projects that are attractive to external financial actors. The thesis therefore argues that ownership does not completely disappear within Global Gateway, but changes. It becomes less a question of independent national prioritisation and more a question of adjustment within an already defined investment framework. This has consequences for poverty reduction, local inclusiveness and the possibility of transforming formal partnership into actual influence over the direction of development projects.