"Africa is at the heart of the agenda of the European Commission. So it should be. The European Union and Africa have a deep and growing relationship. The European Union has agreed to double development assistance by 2010, and 80% of the extra $50 billion pledged to Africa at the G8 last year will come from Europe.

But the relationship must be about much more than development assistance. The European Union is Africa's biggest trading partner, for example buying 85% of all African agricultural exports. The EU and Africa are linked by commercial, political and cultural ties. We work together to further the peace and stability of the continent. European support for the African Union peacekeepers in Darfur is just the most recent example of this. It is also on the basis of a Commission proposal that European leaders adopted in December 2005, for the first time ever, a European strategy for Africa: an ambitious, long term framework, to update our relations with the whole African continent.

A core element of the strategy is governance. Sustainable development requires states to be legitimate in the eyes of their citizens and to deliver the core functions of the state. That is why the European Commission has launched a governance initiative, proposing additional financial support - around 3 billion euro - to those African countries that have adopted or committed to a credible plan of concrete governance reforms. The African Peer Review Mechanism, the African Union's own voluntary regulatory system, will be a central reference point for our initiative.

It is for the same reasons that I welcome whole heartedly the efforts of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation in promoting good governance and fostering African leadership. I want you to know that the European Commission is very much committed and I am personally very much committed to these goals, and to the value of EU-African partnership. We can say that we share the same goals and objectives. It is only through a global effort that we will make this decade a watershed in the history of our two continents. To do this we cannot look inwards, we must look outwards; and that's what we are doing."