Although it will be the third joint session between the two sides, it is the first time the EC has convened a meeting outside of Europe. Addis will be swarmed by 10 commissioners, including Louis Michel, head of Development and Humanitarian Aid, and Mr. Mandelson.

The two sides are expected to evaluate progress made on a strategy the EU developed on Africa last year: it gives much emphasis on the management of migration from Africa, while AU’s interest lies in the partnership it feels it has with the EU on infrastructural development.

The EU has agreed to grant 55 million euro to the cash strapped AU in its institutional capacity building efforts, to be effective January 1, 2007. It is one of the four issues AU wants to address in strategic planning developed two years ago.

Prime Minister Meles is determined to take advantage of the presence of top EU officials in Addis. He will be meeting with many of the commissioners, but more importantly, with Mr. Mandelson on Tuesday, together with his top lieutenants in the economic sector. According to sources, Trade and Industry Minister Girma Birru and chief Economic Advisor, Neway Gebreab, will be attending this meeting, to be held in his office.

Ethiopian officials are expected to push EU to loosen up trade barriers based on quality standards, as well as concerns on sanitary and phytosanitary issues. There is a great deal of concern by African trade negotiators that the negotiation on EPA is focused on the reciprocal tariff reduction that is deemed to benefit EU, a trading bloc that has already provided non-reciprocal quote and duty free market access to countries such as Ethiopia.

Ethiopia was one of 16 countries from eastern and southern Africa (ESA) to table a text comprising 140 articles in the Kenya coastal town of Mombassa last Wednesday, September 27. It was a result of consensus on trade, agriculture services, market access and fisheries, reached in Khartoum last month within the group.

EU trade negotiators in Mombasa, Peter Thompson, general director for Trade, and Rodger Moore, general director for Development, were under fierce criticism from their counterparts from ESA that EU is undermining what has been agreed in Doha, Qatar: that trade agreements should have development component.

Erastus Mwencha, secretary general of COMESA, reminded the Mombassa attendees that what he said is a long-standing disagreement on how to include development in EPA, and claimed in the absence of such an agreement a deal between EU and ACP has no value to the ESA countries.

He is not alone.

The administration of Prime Minister Meles strongly believes that it can only bring speedy economic growth through agricultural led industrialization driven mainly by the export sector. The sixth EPRDF conference, for instance, concluded last week, expressed its resolve to pursue a policy of local industrialization with the focus on export.

It needs trading partners with big markets and as little barrier on trade as possible. Meles believes, in a paper he recently distributed in Manchester, UK, that trade is an instrument for growth and the West should view it accordingly.

Europe is one of the major markets for Ethiopian primary goods, particularly coffee, sugar, pulses, oilseeds and lately flowers. It bought goods worth 371.8 million dollars, representing close to 37pc of Ethiopian exports last year, only barely second to Asia that had a 38pc share, due largely to China’s large scale purchase of sesame.

The trade balance has, however, remained in favor of Europe: according to a study that surveyed trade between the EU and Ethiopia four years ago, the latter had bought 369.5 million dollars more than what it had exported during the same year, 210.2 million dollars.