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Chloe Teevan and Gautam Kamath interview Kai Zenner, Head of Office for MEP Axel Voss (European People's Party) and Senior Fellow at the Technical University of Munich. Kai was instrumental in the finalization of the AI Act and is a well-known commentator on European tech policy.A paradigm shift in transatlantic relations is forcing Europe to realize that it's "now or never" for significant changes in digital policy. Concerns about potential foreign control over critical data are pushing EU policymakers to act. Kai Zenner discusses his role in the EuroStack initiative: a grassroots movement uniting diverse individuals who feel Europe has become a "digital colony" dependent in critical areas. He describes the biggest hurdle is a lack of political leadership willing to make the necessary hard, strategic investment choices, rather than fragmented small investments.Gautam Kamath concludes by discussing Europe's strategic interdependencies, noting a divide between those advocating for purely European solutions and those recognizing Europe's need for openness and partnerships. Europe's historical strengths lie in being an open trading bloc and fostering consensus and needs to forge mutual partnerships with countries like Brazil (green technologies), Africa (AI), and India (skills and tech stack): moving beyond the "Brussels effect" and focusing on what Europe can learn from its global partners in a multipolar world.

Chloe Teevan and Gautam Kamath interview Robin Berjon, French-Australian technologist, Deputy Director of the IPFS Foundation, and a major thinker on technology sovereignty and the tech stack.Robin Berjon explains that power in technology stems from operating infrastructures and that the current governance model for these infrastructural systems is largely autocratic, controlled by monopolies or duopolies. This autocratic power, which sets rules for users, can seep into society, potentially making society itself autocratic. The rules set by these digital monopolies can even become more important to businesses, like publishers, than state laws, leading to a loss of self-governance for collectives.He argues that the problem isn't a lack of innovation; it's the capture of architectural control points (e.g., how revenue flows, system defaults) by a tiny number of actors, leading to high power concentration. Breaking these monopolies requires intervention at the infrastructural level to liberate these control points, not just more innovation. Instead of trying to replicate Silicon Valley's model, which could lead to similar problems with European companies, the solution lies in breaking down digital problems into components and rebuilding them as governance infrastructure. The India Stack is presented as an interesting example of this approach: by allowing users on both sides of two-sided markets like ride-hailing to jointly control the network, it enables innovation and works better for both providers and consumers, unlike systems controlled by singular monopolies like Uber or Amazon.

Although young people are already the driving force behind Africa’s economic transformations, they find themselves locked out from decision-making. In this podcast, Sara Gianesello speaks to Francesca Midzi from the EU delegation in Zimbabwe about the first-ever Youth Sounding Board, which gives young people the opportunity to shape EU action in their country, and lessons learned for promoting youth engagement elsewhere.

Switching from an off-budget EDF to a unique EU instrument (NDICI-Global Europe) has some technical implications for the EU and for partner countries, which in turn may bring some political consequences to the relationships between them. The NDICI-Global Europe brings in simplicity, flexibility, agility, and reactivity - all crucial to making the EU a more geopolitical player. To understand how the changes land in reality, ex-EU ambassador to the Republic of Cameroon, Philippe van Damme, describes what limitations and potential of the EU’s new approach have been revealed in practice and how the EU has learned, or not learned, from previous approaches. 

The definition of mutual interests is a good occasion to ask how development objectives are integrated in the Global gateway strategy and the NDICI-Global Europe. Moreover, the programming phase of the NDICI-Global Europe allowed the EU not only to define its cooperation activities, but primarily to set its interests and priorities for each partner country, and then seek where and how these could match with the partner country’s priorities. As Botswana’s ambassador to the Kingdom of Belgium and permanent representative to the EU, H.E. Mmasekgoa Masire-Mwamba reveals how Botswana has negotiated its mutual interests with the EU, how this affects its partnership and the asymmetry of this relationship.

Broadening the partnerships has been one of the significant shifts of the EU development cooperation’s recent evolution. On paper, the EU aims at engaging in a more meaningful manner with civil society, and at supporting them in a more effective way. But in reality, how has the relationship between the EU and civil society in partner countries changed with the EU’s new approach to development? Moses Isooba is the executive director of the Uganda National NGO Platform (UNNGOP), an organisation uniting national and international NGOs in the country, and stresses the importance of engaging with civil society to enhance the participation, legitimacy and influence of its projects.

In this podcast series, Amandine Sabourin interviews key partners in EU development policy to understand how the EU’s increasingly transactional approach is experienced by partner countries. From EU ambassador to the Republic of Cameroon Philippe van Damme to ambassador Masire-Mwamba of Botswana to the Kingdom of Belgium and Uganda civil society leader Moses Isooba, the series explores how rulings designed in Brussels are actually playing out on the ground, their effect on the EU’s relationship with its partners, and vital lessons for the EU if it wants to achieve its development ambitions.

Critical raw materials are vital for the EU's green transition and offer African countries a path to green industrialisation. Both however face policy dilemmas: Africa must efficiently use resources within, and share them between, countries, while the EU seeks to derisk from China and maintain industrial leadership. In this podcast, Poorva and Géraud discuss how these different moving parts fit together.