ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how the DG8 altered its public diplomacy strategy under the influence of changing ideas about development aid. While a declassification of sources is required to gain a more nuanced understanding of the European Economic Community’s integral approach to Africa in the aftermath of 1989, an examination of The Courier suggests the DG8 acted as a reluctant soft power. Africans who had completed training in all kinds of sectors with the help of DG8 were given a platform in the magazine, in a section called ‘African voices.’ In the 1970s, the DG8 presented itself as a development agency and viewed Africans as a sceptical target audience that needed to be convinced. That concern for the particularities of the African experience only increased in the 1980s as the high hopes of the New International Economic Order came crashing down. Historians have yet to address the Community’s commitment to democracy as it relates to Africa after 1989.
