Africa 50 years on, from unity to union

As the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) transformed itself to become the African Union, the challenges that dogged the Pan-African attempt at unity at its birth 50 years ago this year have lingered, writes Cornelius Adedze.

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THE desire for a united Africa, just after the independence of some African countries in the 1950s, resulted in the formation of various groupings. The two dominant groups were the Casablanca Group and the Monrovia Group. The Casablanca Group was in favour of a politically united federation of African states immediately whereas the Monrovia Group wanted a looser alliance based on gradual economic cooperation. In the end, on 25 May 1963, in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, 32 independent African countries brought into being the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), a compromised institution.

Fifty years on, the OAU, now transformed into the African Union (AU), has not got any closer to achieving an economic union, nor has it blossomed into a loose federation of African states. The fundamental challenges of whether total political unity or an economic union would best suit the interests of Africa still persist. At the AU Summit in 2007 in Accra, Ghana to commemorate Ghana's 50th independence anniversary, the subject was touted as the Grand Debate that was to finally settle the issue between the 'gradualists' and the 'instantists'. Unfortunately, the debate was not to be. So union government of Africa once more slipped by, and as then Prime Minister of Lesotho, Pakalitha Mosisii, put it, 'Integration should be gradual rather than precipitous. It must be evolutionary rather than revolutionary.'

True political and individual differences may have prevented the OAU from reaching its goal of unity but the decolonisation of the continent is one of the major achievements that the organisation can boast of. By the close of the 1970s most of Africa was independent save for Namibia, Zimbabwe and South Africa. South Africa, the last colonial bastion, was freed from the clutches of apartheid rule in 1994. Beyond decolonisation, however, various attempts at unification, not just as a United States of Africa but through cooperation in various ways, have not been fully achieved.

Faultlines

Specialised agencies like the Pan African News Agency, Pan-African Telecommunications Union, Pan-African Postal Union and Union of African National Television and Radio Organisations have become dormant if not moribund. The OAU limped on as African countries struggled from one challenge to another for economic survival from the 1970s onwards, battered by both the effects of the Cold War and, later, structural adjustment. The initial differences on the way forward for African unity became more pronounced as each country and its leadership looked more toward their individual country's 'survival' rather than that of the collective African state.

Just like in the founding and early stages of the OAU, some African leaders stepped up to pursue the 'unity' agenda in diverse ways. Unfortunately, unlike in the founding years when one could count on the likes of Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Nasser of Egypt and others to hold the fort for those calling for 'unity' as soon as possible, by the 1970s these 'progressive voices' had been silenced, through coups d'etat or death. The 'gradualists' like Houphouet-Boigny of Cote d'Ivoire, Senghor of Senegal and Haile Selassie of Ethiopia then held sway.

The 1970s thus saw a slowdown in the attempts at political unity of Africa and was punctuated by the effects of the Cold War as African countries got caught up in the West and East war of ideology and domination.

The faultlines of the OAU were made sharper in this period as members were divided along the ideological lines of Capitalism and Communism, no longer along lines of immediate and gradual political unity of Africa.

Africa's efforts at integration have thus been largely influenced and dictated by individual leaders who called the shots due to their economic or political hold over others. With the worsening economic situation in most African countries, the solution to it as suggested by some was the strengthening of regional economic blocs that would be the building blocks of a future united Africa. They took a leaf from the book of the blossoming European Union. Thus the era of regional economic communities (RECs) began. On the heels of these came such seminal efforts as the Lagos Plan of Action and eventually the Abuja Treaty that called for the establishment of institutions like the African Central Bank, the African Monetary Fund, the African Court of Justice and in particular, the Pan-African Parliament. The Abuja Treaty reiterated the strengthening and consolidation of the RECs as the pillars for achieving the objectives of an African Economic Community and finally a union of African states.

In pursuit of these objectives the OAU from 1999 initiated a series of extraordinary sessions aimed at achieving economic and political integration of the continent. Four OAU summits were critical in this. These were:

 The Sirte Extraordinary Session (1999) (decision to establish an African Union taken)

 The Lome Summit (2000) (adoption of the Constitutive Act of the Union)

 The Lusaka Summit (2001) (the roadmap for the implementation of the AU drawn)

 The Durban Summit (2002) (launch of the AU and convening of the 1st Assembly of the Heads of State of the African Union).

The Sirte Summit was spearheaded by the late Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi, who thought that the time was due for the realisation of the United States of Africa, a dream of some of the founding fathers of the OAU. His radical ideas for an immediate implementation, however, as usual met with resistance from the 'gradualists' and sceptics who doubted his intentions and saw in him an ambition to become leader of a united Africa, just like others before him saw Nkrumah as an overambitious leader seeking to become President of a united Africa.

Gadhafi's plan of actualising the initial dreams of a united Africa with a single army, a common currency and trade and travel freedom was thus shot down. Indeed this proposal led rather to further divisions within the OAU as once again a watered-down version resulted in the formation of the African Union. For some the objectives of the African Union are more comprehensive and attuned to the current needs of the continent than those of its predecessor, the OAU. The transformation of the OAU into the AU also coincided with the introduction of NEPAD, the New Partnership for Africa's Development, sponsored by the likes of Thabo Mbeki (then President of South Africa) and Abdelaziz Bouteflika of Algeria. This new development paradigm, a neoliberal, Western-sponsored effort, was diametrically opposed to Gadhafi's proposals that relied more on Africa's own homegrown efforts at development.

Challenges

The NEPAD agenda which 'killed' Gadhafi's ideas could also not survive, thus throwing Africa back into finding another approach to unity and development. The regional economic communities are themselves at varied levels of integration. Some have made some progress whereas others are still a long way off from achieving their objectives. In the meantime, Africa continues to be riddled with social, economic and political challenges that the African Union, given its current status, is unable to resolve. Top on the list are the civil strife in Somalia, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Mali, among others that the African Union is at pains to deal with. In Mali, the regional economic community, ECOWAS, could not deal with the situation until France bulldozed its way through. In Somalia, where civil war has raged on since the 1990s, the AU has found it an intractable situation though it has some forces there. Would the much-talked-about African Standby Force have stood up to these situations?

A new deadline of 2015 has just been issued the five regions - East, West, Central, North and Southern Africa - to develop their own standby brigades with military, police and civilian components. For a force which was mooted 50 years ago at the founding of the OAU, the new deadline speaks volumes of Africa's preparedness to confront its challenges. This is the third time that a new deadline has had to be issued.

The African Standby Force's  operationalisation had been planned for 2008, pushed to 2010, then 2013 and now to 2015. There are doubts among experts as to whether the force will be operational even by then.

Economic cooperation has not fared better either. Free movement of people and goods thereby facilitating trade among African countries is also a big challenge. Apart from infrastructural challenges (which NEPAD was to address), policy harmonisation and implementation remain major obstacles, although to varying degrees in the various regional economic communities. Trade among African countries, though on the increase, remains small as compared with trade with the rest of the world. Only about 10% of Africa's imports are from Africa, with close to 90% from outside Africa. Should Africa sign the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with the European Union, it is likely that trade among African countries will further dwindle as Africa would be swamped with European goods and services.

Africa's quest to work together to confront the threat that globalisation poses is also at risk as foreign 'partners' seem to have taken over the policy direction of the African Union. Some of these foreign partners have become more or less consultants to the AU directing its policy whilst others underwrite its expenditure.

Fifty years of the OAU/AU may have chalked up some successes from decolonisation to efforts at uniting the continent, but unless the teething problems that were pushed aside in the organisation's founding years are dealt with, the ghosts of that period would continue to haunt and dog the continent's attempts at unity.   u

Cornelius Adedze is Editor of African Agenda magazine, which is published by TWN Africa, the Africa section of the Third World Network. This article is reproduced from African Agenda (Vol. 16, No. 2).

*Third World Resurgence No. 278, October 2013, pp 8-9