The EU's identity construction as a normative power has often been described as a practice by which the EU portrays itself as a force for good while at the same time depicting other actors as inferior, thereby disempowering them rhetorically. In contrast to this, our findings indicate that in its relations to Sub-Saharan Africa, the EU intends to empower African countries by referring to them in a framework of solidarity and partnership. We trace this mechanism of empowering by analysing how ...