South Africa-EU summit centers on boosting trade and diplomatic ties as both feel Trump's impact

CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — Senior European Union officials were in South Africa for a summit Thursday with President Cyril Ramaphosa that centers on bolstering trade and diplomatic ties as both feel the impact of the Trump administration's confrontational foreign policy.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President António Costa will meet with Ramaphosa at his Cape Town office in the first EU-South Africa summit since 2018.

The focus of the 27-nation bloc will switch to its biggest trading partner in sub-Saharan Africa after the EU announced retaliatory tariffs against Washington in response to U.S. President Donald Trump's new duties on steel and aluminium.

The summit in South Africa will “explore new avenues for economic, trade and investment cooperation, as well as address any challenges and trade irritants,” the European Council said.

South Africa has been singled out for sanctions by the Trump administration over some domestic and foreign policies that the U.S. leader has cast as anti-American.

Trump issued an executive order last month cutting all U.S. funding to South Africa, accusing it of a human rights violation against a white minority group in the country, and of supporting some “bad actors” in the world like the Palestinian militant group Hamas and Iran.

Von der Leyen's visit will also likely reemphasize the EU's support for South Africa's presidency of the Group of 20 leading rich and developing nations this year, another area where the U.S. has criticized South Africa while boycotting some early G20 meetings.

South Africa hopes to use its leadership of the group to make progress on help for poor countries, especially on debt relief and more financing to mitigate the impact of climate change.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio dismissed some of those priorities for the G20 and skipped a foreign ministers meeting of the group in South Africa last month. He also said that he wouldn't attend the main G20 summit in Johannesburg in November, indicating that the U.S. would give little attention to attempts at international cooperation through the bloc, which includes 19 of the world's major economies, the EU and the African Union.

Rubio is attending talks with other top diplomats from the Group of Seven industrialized democracies in Canada starting Thursday.

The EU said that von der Leyen would use the meeting in South Africa to announce a new investment package that uses public and private grants and loans to finance green energy projects in South Africa, improve transport infrastructure like railways and ports, and strengthen its vaccine production capacity.

The U.S. withdrew this month from an agreement that gave funding to South Africa and two other developing nations to help them transition to clean energy sources. The EU has also pledged money to that Just Energy Transition Partnership and said that it's still committed to the program.

“My message: Europe values its partnership with South Africa,” von der Leyen said in a statement before the meeting with Ramaphosa.

AP Africa news: https://apnews.com/hub/africa

President Donald Trump listens as Ireland's Prime Minister Micheál Martin speaks during an event in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Wednesday, March 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen walks to brief European Parliament members on new plans to ramp up defense spending agreed at last week's summit, Tuesday, March 11, 2025 at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, eastern France. (AP Photo/Pascal Bastien)

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP) — The interim government of Ethiopia’s Tigray region appealed for the Ethiopian federal government to intervene after a faction of the Tigray People's Liberation Front seized control of two major towns, leaving several people wounded and raising fears of a return to civil war.

On Tuesday the TPLF faction seized Adigrat, the second-biggest town in Tigray, and appointed a new administrator, ousting the office-holder loyal to the interim government. On Wednesday night, it took control of Adi-Gudem, a town near the regional capital, Mekele. Several people in Adi-Gudem suffered gunshot wounds when armed forces attempted to occupy a government building.

The TPLF fought a brutal two-year war against federal forces which ended in November 2022 with the signing of a peace agreement and the formation of a TPLF-led interim government. Hundreds of thousands of people are believed to have been killed in the fighting which began in November 2020, with millions displaced and many left near famine in Africa’s second-most populous country.

However, since the war ended, the TPLF has splintered. In October, its leader, Debretsion Gebremichael, expelled the head of the interim government, Getachew Reda, from the party along with four members of his cabinet.

In retaliation, Reda, who was the chief negotiator of the peace agreement, temporarily suspended four senior military commanders who he believed were aligned with Gebremichael’s faction.

“The region may be on the brink of another crisis,” read a statement Wednesday from the Tigray Communication Affairs Bureau, which is part of the interim government.

Reda has described the TPLF's recent actions as a “potential coup attempt."

In a televised interview, he emphasized the need for the international community — one of the key guarantors of the Pretoria Peace Agreement — to closely monitor the escalating situation in the war-torn region.

“The parties to the Pretoria Agreement should really take into account the deteriorating situation in Tigray and the far-reaching ramifications of the unraveling of the Pretoria agreements,” he said.

TPLF deputy chairman Amanuel Assefa told The Associated Press that the current crises have nothing to do with the Pretoria agreement but are largely related to law enforcement.

“The TPLF and the Tigray forces are the rightful owners of the Pretoria Agreement. Therefore there is no reason to engage in any actions that would violate that”, he said.

FILE - Ethiopians holding national flags protest against what they say is interference by outsiders in the country's internal affairs and against the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), the party of Tigray's fugitive leaders, at a rally organized by the city administration in the capital Addis Ababa, Ethiopia Saturday, Oct. 22, 2022. (AP Photo, File)