"The European market is effectively blocked. At the same time, European exports to Africa are growing. Therefore, my main message to Brussels is - Open the markets to all African goods ... This is the only way the continent can turn into the region of growth ... I am sure that the African youth ... would not flee [the continent] and would remain in their home countries if there were jobs and prospects for the future."The very basis of this proposal rests in the naïve assumption that Africans are fleeing the continent purely for humanitarian reasons stemming from local conflicts and economic underdevelopment, ignoring the fact that many simply want a piece of the EU's "socialist welfare utopia".
Germany is right to raise awareness about the need to do something though, because a prominent UN official warned earlier this year that the failure to deal with these interconnected push factors could lead to half a billion migrants invading the EU under the worst-case scenario.
The author analyzed this at the time in a piece about how "Migrant Crisis 2.0 Might Come From Africa", which was followed by a related article where a former French Prime Minister basically told a South African crowd that "France Wants The Future To Be Eurasia vs. Eurafrica".
Comment: The best characterization of the anti-Russian sanctions so far comes from senior Russian senator Konstantin Kosachev: