The Africa-European Union summit ended yesterday in Portugal with agreement on many global challenges but with differences on other key issues.

European and African Union leaders left the Portuguese capital expressing satisfaction for the most part with their first summit in seven years and what they called a new spirit in relations between the two continents.

The head of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, said they agreed that climate change probably represents the most important challenge of the 21st Century.

"Climate change is not just an issue for environment," he said. "It's also an issue for development. And only with the commitment of African leaders and European leaders can we really achieve some progress."

The leaders agreed to increase efforts to fight deforestation and desertification.

The president of the European Union, Portuguese Prime Minister José Sócrates, said the summit's plan to deal with migration was an example of the new partnership. He says the leaders want to combat illegal immigration but encourage legal migration and help immigrants to integrate more fully into their new countries.

The leaders agreed to develop information programs for would-be migrants in Africa and to address the drain of African skilled workers by promoting ethical recruitment policies in critical fields.

On governance, the head of the African Union, Ghana's President John Kufuor, said Africa has an interest in good governance and respect for human rights.

"Transparency is the order of the day," he said. "This is not to saying there is perfection. The point is that we all see that it is with good governance that we will attract the partnerships for development that we need."

He noted that the AU has created mechanisms such as the Africa Peer Review to promote these ideals.

The leaders also agreed to promote security by developing a system for rapid conflict prevention and funds for an African rapid deployment force, but human rights issues brought discord.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel criticized Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe's human rights record as bringing shame on the continent. This led Mr. Mugabe to accuse her of arrogance. A dispute over whether to invite Mr. Mugabe blocked the summit for five years and was only resolved a few months ago.

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir met with United Nations officials seeking to deploy a joint U.N.-Africa peacekeeping force in Darfur. The two sides said some clarifications were obtained but that critical needs remain, in particular air support.

The issue of free trade agreements caused the most public controversy. Senegal's President Abdoulaye Wade said the accords would set back African development.

He says there is no African industry that can withstand competition from Europe with its millions of consumers.

Most African governments have refused to sign the accords. The accords exempt African exports from European tariffs but also call for lower African tariffs on European goods. European officials said negotiations will continue.

Civic organizations had little praise for the summit. The Oxfam group said African opposition to the trade agreements should serve as a wake-up call to European leaders.

Human Rights Watch said the summit failed to make any progress on restoring the rule of law in Zimbabwe, bringing peace to Darfur or preventing banks from protecting the wealth of corrupt officials.

And Save The Children called the meeting a high profile exercise of little substance, noting that five million African children continue to die of preventable causes every year. It said since the leaders declared this a summit of equals they must bear equal responsibility for its failures.

The just concluded Africa-EU Summit in Lisbon, Portugal, offered African leaders an opportunity to state the African case without ambiguity. President Abdoulie Wade of Senegal, the unofficial spokesman of his peers, said: “I agree with this spirit of creating a new relationship [with Europe], but we have to define what that relationship is.” For too long, Africans have behaved like a lamb to the slaughter, swallowing whole any measure rammed down our throats by our European brothers and sisters.

Although we believe in mutual interdependence, it is now time for Africans to think and act for themselves. It is now time for Africans to stipulate the rules of the game, without having to be subservient to Europeans every time. African leaders did just that when they rejected the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) proposed to come into force on January 1 2008, after the expiration on December 31 of the waiver by the World Trade Organization (WTO) on preferential trade arrangements for developing countries. This is just another subtle attempt to impoverish Africa further. African leaders must never ever have a second thought on their rejection of this pernicious package. They did the right thing for Africa; and we must stick to it, come rain or sunshine.

The Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Socrates underlined this new dawn when he said: “We are here to write an entirely new page in the history of relations between Europe and Africa.” And the Ghanaian president John Kufour was spot on when he pointed out that Africa needs Europe as much as Europe needs Africa. If African leaders are assertive enough, they can undo the existing donor-beneficiary relationship and replace it with it one that is mutually reciprocal. How? Africa needs infrastructure and Europe needs our mineral wealth. If our leaders know what they are doing, they can strong arm Europe to do our bidding in every way.

It is for this reason we disagree with President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa that lack of resources is one of the biggest challenges facing Africa. The biggest trouble facing Africa is bad governance, not lack of resources. All we need at this point in time is a selfless, responsible and visionary leadership to harness the abundant human and material resources across the continent in order to guarantee a better life for the people of Africa.

President Mbeki’s address at the Africa-EU Summit is a variation on the same theme of his address at the 62nd Session of the UN General Assembly on 25 September 2007. In that address, the South African leader called for “massive resource transfers through development assistance, investment, trade, technology transfers and human resource development to poor countries”. President Mbeki’s call is illusory, as experience has shown that Western development aid comes with a sting in the tail.

We note with regret that President Yahya Jammeh, a pan-Africanist of note, was absent at the Africa-EU Summit. President Jammeh has been conspicuous by his absence from similar summits in recent times. He was absent from the 62nd Session of the UN General Assembly, the last AU Summit in Ghana, and the African-Taiwan Summit in Taipei. As an ardent critic of imperialism and unfair world trade practices, President Jammeh should have endeavoured to grace these summits with his presence to propagate his beliefs where they could have had the most impact.