(Brussels) “Public investment alone cannot meet the critical needs, which are estimated at $210bn per year for Africa to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals”; the private sector may be “an additional resource” with development-directed investments in developing countries, but we should not forget that private actors are “profit-oriented”, not charities. For this reason, the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Community (COMECE) suggests some political guidelines that look at the recent External Investment Plan launched by the EU on the occasion of the EU-Africa Summit in Abidjan at the end of November to ensure that private investment is anchored on the objective of “sustainable and inclusive growth” for Africa. The principles listed by COMECE in the document “Private Investment and Development” should guide investments: taking place in a context of “partnership, not assistance”, with all that this implies; starting a virtuous circle of growth in all sectors and preventing the systematic plundering of resources that has marked the presence of European countries in Africa for years; creating market access without stifling the “domestic economy”, but trying to protect it and foster it instead; all this in a context of accountability and transparency in the management of the resources invested. For each of these criteria, the document proposes specific political guidelines (www.comece.eu).