Tools

Research is only useful if it leads somewhere.

Alongside our research and podcast, Meridian17 builds practical tools that help businesses, policymakers, and organisations navigate the Africa-Europe partnership in practice — not just in theory.

01 / Global Gateway Tracker
Tool 01 Live

Infrastructure & investment

Global Gateway Africa Tracker.

The EU's Global Gateway Initiative has committed over €300 billion to infrastructure projects worldwide, with a major focus on Africa. This tracker maps every confirmed project across the continent — sourced directly from the EU Commission's official project database and enriched with pillar classification, phase assessment, and location data.

  • 01Interactive Africa map with project markers sized by investment scale and coloured by pillar.
  • 02Five GGI pillars: Digital, Energy, Transport, Health, and Education & Research.
  • 03Five-stage phase tracking from Announced through to Completed, with filter controls.
  • 04Official EU source data — every project links to its EU Commission detail page.
Explore the tracker → 93 projects · 32 countries · Updated monthly
02 / Business Navigator
Tool 02 Concept · seeking funding

Market entry & regulation

The Africa–Europe Business Navigator.

African businesses looking to engage with European partners face a complex landscape — regulatory requirements, due diligence standards, entry points that vary by sector and by country. Most of the information exists, but it is scattered, technical, and written for specialists rather than practitioners.

The Navigator is our response to that challenge — a guided, interactive concept being designed to help African businesses understand what European partnership actually requires in practice, and where to start.

  • 01Sector-specific guidance on the European regulatory environment most relevant to your business.
  • 02A branching questionnaire that tailors information to your specific situation and objectives.
  • 03Plain-language explanations of EU standards, due diligence requirements, and entry points.
  • 04Practical next steps — not just information, but a clear sense of what to do with it.
Explore the concept → Partner with us on funding →
03 / Trade Pulse
Tool 03 Live · pilot

Trade flows

Africa–EU Trade Pulse.

An interactive visualisation of annual export flows from ten leading African economies to individual EU member states, sourced from the UN Comtrade database. Select a country on the map, explore its EU export destinations, and drill down into product-level data.

An early prototype demonstrating the kind of data tools Meridian17 is developing.

  • 01Ten African economies — selectable export origins with matched EU counterparties.
  • 02Product-level drilldown into HS-code categories, with year-on-year comparison.
  • 03UN Comtrade source — methodology notes published alongside each view.
Explore the data → 10 origins · 27 EU destinations · 2013–2024
04 / FDI Tracker
Tool 04 Live · pilot

Investment positions

Africa–Europe FDI Tracker.

European investment in Africa is often cited but rarely mapped in detail. This tool draws on Eurostat's bilateral foreign direct investment position data to show which EU member states hold the largest stakes in which African economies, and how those positions have shifted over time.

Select a year, explore the maps, and click any country to see the full picture of its investment relationships across both continents.

  • 01EU-to-Africa view showing member states with the largest outward FDI positions.
  • 02Africa-from-EU view showing which African economies attract the most investment, and from where.
  • 03Historical trends from 2013 to 2024 — bar charts and trend lines for each bilateral relationship.
  • 04Honest data caveats on routing effects, reporting gaps, and the limits of immediate-counterpart methodology.
Explore the data → Eurostat · 2013–2024 · 27 × 10 matrix
05 / Our approach

Our approach

Tools built from research, not alongside it.

Most think tanks produce research and leave it to others to turn it into practice. We do not think that is good enough. Every tool Meridian17 builds grows directly out of our research — it is a practical expression of what the evidence shows and what businesses actually need.

The Navigator is the first example of this. It is built on our research into the barriers African businesses face when engaging with European partners, and on direct input from businesses who have navigated — or tried to navigate — that landscape themselves.

More tools will follow, each rooted in a specific research question and designed for a specific user.

06 / What comes next

What comes next

Three tools we are exploring for the next cycle.

As our research programme develops, we will build additional tools that translate findings into practical resources. Below are the areas we are exploring for future development — shaped by our priority research topics and by what we hear from practitioners.

Exploring 01

Investment risk explorer.

A tool helping European investors understand and contextualise risk perceptions around African markets — comparing perceived risk with actual investment performance data.

Exploring 02

Business sentiment tracker.

An interactive dashboard drawing on our Beat of Business annual data, allowing users to track how African business sentiment toward European partnership evolves over time.

Exploring 03

Partnership matchmaker.

A structured resource helping African and European businesses identify potential partners based on sector, geography, and strategic objectives.

Exploratory — no commitment to develop until funding and research underpinning are in place. Fund or collaborate on one →

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