A systemic framework for SME empowerment and demographic resilience in Euro-African relations
Policy brief no. 16 | September 2026
By Manuel Jesgarz
This policy brief addresses the urgent need to realign Euro-African cooperation from paternalistic aid ("feeding") toward the strategic empowerment ("fostering") of African small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
Using the global polycrisis as a diagnostic foundation,ii the demographic divergence between Europe and Africa is identified as a strategic opportunity to build a Euro-African circular repair economy. In response, the African Scorecard Framework (ASF) is introduced as a proposed operational tool. Frameworks like the ASF equip policymakers and SMEs to embed sustainability and local knowledge directly into market-entry decisions.iii By systematically mitigating "epistemic dissonance"—the fundamental mismatch between imported Western business models and local African realities—and leveraging the Ubuntu paradigm, the model ensures social embeddedness.iv To maintain investor attractiveness, rigid regulations are replaced by flexibly calibrated indicative benchmark targets.
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