2.2 Goals of Ireland’s Industry 4.0 Strategy

3.2 Engaging with the World

Ireland’s Embassies in Africa reallocated more than €22.6 million from their development programming to support immediate health and humanitarian responses to COVID-19, and a further €46.3 million to mitigate its socio-economic impacts.

Regional Strategies

Under Global Ireland, a number of cross-sectoral regional strategies are being published, helping to intensify Ireland’s relations with specific regions, increasing trade and investment, improving political relationships, promoting Irish culture, and increasing people-to-people exchanges.

The cross-government Asia-Pacific Strategy was published in January 2020 and is based on five Strategic Objectives around Ireland’s political, economic, cultural and people-to-people relationships with this region. Implementation of the strategy is being taken forward in the context of a Stakeholders’ Forum, which includes the key Departments and State Agencies.

In November 2019, the Government published a regional strategy for Africa and considerable progress was achieved across its strategic objectives, despite the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Stronger political partnerships with Africa were advanced through a high number of bilateral meetings with African partners and ongoing deepening of engagement with the African Union. Ireland significantly stepped up engagement in the Sahel, by becoming an observer member of the Sahel Alliance, which coordinates development cooperation in the region, and through the appointment of a Special Envoy for Francophone Africa and the Sahel. Ireland also began the application process for Associate Observer membership of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP), which is being finalised ahead of the CPLP Heads of State and Government Summit in Angola in July 2021.

The next meeting of the Stakeholders Forum will be asked to approve the first annual report to Government on the implementation of the Strategy.

It will show progress across each of the five Strategic Objectives, despite the pandemic restrictions which have curtailed travel to/from the region. A new embassy will be opened in Manila in 2021, a key commitment in the Strategy, and the Government announced the winning design for Ireland House Tokyo in September 2020 (the largest ever overseas capital project by the State).

Outlook for 2021

Ireland increased support in 2020 for innovation in Irish-African private sector collaboration, including through a pilot catalytic fund to help Irish businesses develop tech partnerships with entrepreneurs in South Africa. The National Task Team on Rural Africa published a report in November on Ireland’s potential contribution to the transformation of Africa’s rural economy. In 2020, funding of over €140 million was allocated to twelve countries in sub-Saharan Africa to support the achievement of the SDGs.

A Strategy for Latin America and the Caribbean to 2025 is in the final stages of development and drafting. It is planned that the strategy will be published and launched later in 2021, in the context of recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic in Ireland and in the LAC region.