ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to investigate the role of civil society in European Union (EU)-Africa relations. It begins by conceptualising civil society, taking an analytical exploration of the concept – specifically, considering its European origins and how common descriptive parameters for understanding the concept of civil society in the EU-Africa context can be discerned by understanding and appreciating the concept by applying the African gaze. The chapter offers a historical overview of how civil society emerged and developed from the start of the EU-Africa institutional relationship, before measuring the expanding and shrinking space that civil society currently occupies and examining to what extent current modalities and approaches to the role of civil society could act as a blueprint for the future.
