It may look strange, but the French and Dutch no to the referendums on the European constitutional treaty has been welcomed by many west Africans.
One of the most vocal is the former Malian minister of tourism, Aminata Traore, an icon of Francophone Africa's anti-globalisation movement and a friend of the famous French crusader against genetically modified organisms, José Bové.
She believes the French no was a veto on globalisation, which destroys jobs worldwide. Similarly, she argues that Africa should say no to the EPAs, which she sees as one of the main instruments to globalise Africa.
EPAs are currently being negotiated between the EU and the poor African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries, which for many years have had preferential access to the EU market.
These EPAs should be signed before January 1 2008. They are meant to replace the current preferential trade agreements by more reciprocal free trade agreements, which must be compatible with the World Trade Organisation's free trade rules.
Obviously, Traore and other activists from African and European civil society are not convinced by EU trade commissioner Peter Mandelson, who addressed the joint parliamentary assembly of the EU and 78 ACP states in Bamoko recently.
Mandelson tries to sell the EPAs as agreements that "are also about securing further market access for the ACP countries in the EU". He promises that the EU would help the ACP countries increase their ability to produce exportable goods and to establish a "monitoring mechanism" to ensure that the EU's development aid is effective.
In Mandelson's view, the rules governing trade flows in the EPAs are "inherently good for development because they provide a stable and predictable framework for investors". EPAs need to be designed to complement and not contradict the wider, anti-poverty strategy spelled out in the millennium development goals.
But the African civil society organisations that attended the session - including Traore's Forum for Another Mali, Senegal's Enda Tiers Monde, the Africa Trade Network, the Harare-based Southern and Eastern African Trade Information Institute, and the Zambian Trade Network - issued a statement calling the EPAs "a weapon of mass destruction against African and ACP economies".
They argue that trade liberalisation "does not on its own automatically lead to positive development outcomes" and that ACP countries should not be forced to open up their markets to EU goods "before they are in a position to compete".
They also warn against the considerable risks the EPAs would pose to the finances of the ACP states.
Projections from the German Friedrich Ebert Stiftung predict that the EPAs will cause major declines in government incomes as a result of dismantling trade tariffs since customs revenues represent between 40 percent and 50 percent of state revenues in countries like Ivory Coast and Uganda.
The chairman of Mali's National Co-ordination of Peasants' Organisations, Ibrahim Coulibaly, fears that EPAs will only increase Africa's food deficit.
"There is not a single example in history of a country that managed to develop its agriculture by opening its markets," he says.
"Even the import of products that we don't produce does already undermine our agriculture. Wheat is a case in point. Its price is so low that the consumption of bread has expanded all over the continent, to the detriment of the sorghum- and millet-producing farmers."
Coulibaly says the EU will have to take responsibility if such doomsday scenarios materialise. The risk is enormous for Africa.
More crises and more unemployment will not only cause more illegal immigration to Europe but also more wars.
Coulibaly and Traore say the warlords in Ivory Coast or in Liberia could easily recruit militiamen because the youth there have no job prospects.
"Africa must protect itself," says Traore, disagreeing with Glenys Kinnock, the chairman of the EU-ACP joint parliamentary assembly, who insists that saying no to EPAs is unrealistic.
Traore and her friends are encouraged by the recent victory scored by Cameroonian farmers against European frozen chicken imports.
In a matter of 10 years, these imports caused the loss of 110 000 jobs in this country's poultry industry, explains Bernard Ndjonga from the Yaounde-based Service of Support to Local Development Initiatives.
But Cameroonian farmers in December persuaded their parliament to impose import quotas and additional levies, which have restored their competitiveness. Now Ndjonga and his friends are trying to expand their campaign to other western and central African countries affected in the same way and also to other products such as maize, rice and tomato juice.
One may argue that activists such as Ndjonga, Traore or Coulibaly ignore the fact that EPAs and regional integration can also attract investment and growth by creating economies of scale.
But their campaign against the EPAs, which is only beginning, could cause difficulties not only for Mandelson but also for some African governments.
They will increasingly have to explain to their people why they want to embark on such potentially "dangerous" economic deals.
As Traore says, they will have to counter the argument: "If a majority of citizens in two European countries do not believe that the EU Commission is preparing a rosy future for them, why would Africans be naive enough to think the contrary?" - Independent Foreign Service