The European Union (EU) Commission has proposed conditioning development aid for African and other third countries on their cooperation with migration enforcement. Under the Global Europe instrument, aid allocation may now depend on how well a country cooperates with returns, readmissions, and border controls.

Internal EU documents cited by the Financial Times and Reuters state that countries that do not comply with deportation agreements could see aid slashed. The move has led to criticism from humanitarian organizations, with Oxfam calling it a "distortion of the EU's development goals" and a "short-term political fix" to deeper structural issues.

The policy shift comes amid mounting pressure within Europe to curb irregular migration across the Mediterranean and Sahara routes. The pressure is particularly intense in countries like Germany, Italy, and Greece, where national governments face increasing domestic opposition to asylum-seekers.

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Policy experts and scholars across Africa are condemning the policy shift, calling it coercive and neo-colonial. The EU's approach, they argue, is likely to undermine both sovereignty and trust.

"Stop your people from migrating or lose aid — sounds to me like a message of cohesion and not cooperation," Maria Ayuk, a postdoctoral researcher in peace and security at the Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg in Germany, told DW.

"This reduces the African nations to border guards rather than equal partners in development. The EU is securitizing, and has over the years politicized,........

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