The Joint Africa-EU Strategy (JAES) was conceived as an innovative and far-reaching new partnership, in Lisbon in December 2007, with the aim of transforming the relationship between the two continents. After 2 ½ years of existence, the JAES is currently being subjected to an in-depth reflection amongst the official stakeholders about its architecture and the contents of the next Action Plan. This review process could result in proposals for “significant changes” to be discussed at the next Africa-EU Ministerial Troika on the 27th of April 2010, which will come to some decisions to present to the Third EU-Africa Heads of State Summit scheduled for November 2010. ECDPM, as an independent non-partisan foundation that has followed the JAES since its inception, has sought to contribute to this process in the form of a paper scoping on what could be next for the Strategy. The paper seeks to refresh readers on the original commitments made in the JAES and to provide analysis on underlying successes and challenges, including upstream (political) bottlenecks. It also presents 3 possible reform scenarios for the future of the JAES as well as perspectives on how they might be achieved.