The Portuguese Science Diplomacy and EU’s External Activities with Lusophone Africa: Looking at the Co-building Approach

Abstract

This chapter aims at examining Portugal’s science diplomacy vis-à-vis the Lusophone Africa against the backdrop of the EU’s external science activities. The analysis will depart from a conceptual assessment of science diplomacy as a background to outline both the EU’s and the Portuguese legal and policy frameworks of this developing field. The legal set-up of Portugal’s science diplomacy aims not only at enhancing the international standing of the country’s higher education and science, but also at articulating strategically these domains with national foreign policy. To achieve such goals, the Portuguese authorities have created several projects and initiatives, in association with and funded by the EU’s education and research programmes, thus extending the latter’s reach to Portuguese-speaking countries in Africa. This study demonstrates that Portugal’s science diplomacy towards the Lusophone Africa relies largely on a co-building approach engaging the country’s representatives and the EU institutions and has become a centrepiece of a developing relationship between the EU and Lusophone Africa. While having direct access to EU funding, Portugal has showed the capacity to mould the content of normative conditionalities underlying European science activities implemented in Portuguese-speaking African countries. In so doing, Portugal has ultimately contributed to improve the EU’s standing as a “model power” in the Lusophone world.