Preferential trade access the European Union (EU) has accorded dozens of African countries may have done more harm than good. This is the theme of an essay by the head of the SA Institute of International Affairs Greg Mills and by De Beers director Jonathan Oppenheimer, published this week in a collection of pieces on Africa by a UK-based think tank, the Foreign Policy Centre. Mills and Oppenheimer say that if there is to be real progress in Africa, selective preferential trade access needs to be replaced by broader access to developed markets.