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Note: This document is from the archive of the Africa Policy E-Journal, published
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Africa: African Union
Africa: African Union
Date distributed (ymd): 020305
Document reposted by Africa Action
Africa Policy Electronic Distribution List: an information
service provided by AFRICA ACTION (incorporating the Africa
Policy Information Center, The Africa Fund, and the American
Committee on Africa). Find more information for action for
Africa at http://www.africaaction.org
+++++++++++++++++++++Document Profile+++++++++++++++++++++
Region: Continent-Wide
Issue Areas: +political/rights+ +economy/development+
+security/peace+
SUMMARY CONTENTS:
This posting contains the keynote speech, by Abdul Mohamed of the
InterAfrica Group, at the Symposium on the African Union, held in
Addis Ababa on March 3, 2002, prior to the opening of the third
African Development Forum hosted by the Economic Commission for
Africa (ECA).
Full coverage of the symposium and the forum, including the texts
of other speeches, are available on the
ECA's web site at
http://www.uneca.org/adfiii/coverage
To join the ongoing ECA on-line discussion on regional integration,
send a blank e-mail to
[email protected] and you'll
receive an automated response explaining next steps. For archives
of the discussion, go to
http://www.bellanet.org/adf/2002
To take part in the ongoing AllAfrica.com discussion on related
issues, go to
http://allafrica.com/specials/adf
A previous posting with a speech by ECA Executive Secretary K. Y.
Amoako and links to the text of the New Partnership for Africa's
Development (NEPAD) can be found at:
http://www.africafocus.org/docs01/eca0112.php>
The web site of the InterAfrica Group, a non-governmental
organization based in Addis Ababa, is at
http://www.interafrica.org
+++++++++++++++++end profile++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Challenges for the African Union
Symposium on the African Union
Organised by InterAfrica Group and Justice Africa
Keynote Presentation
by Abdul Mohammed,
Addis Ababa, 03 March 2002
We are meeting here today to discuss one of the greatest challenges
to Africa in our time, the formation of the African Union. The
creation of political and economic unity across the African
continent has been a dream of Africans for many decades, and
realising this dream is a great responsibility that falls upon
African leaders today. For ordinary Africans, unity is a powerful
impulse. I hope that this Symposium today, organised by InterAfrica
Group and Justice Africa, can play a role in identifying how we can
move forward on the realisation of the African Union.
Let me start by thanking the ECA, its Executive Secretary K.Y.
Amoako, and its Deputy Executive Secretary, Lala Ben Barka, for the
opportunity of convening this Symposium on the African Union. I
would like to congratulate them for their enthusiasm and their
exceptional commitment to ensuring that the substantive issues are
discussed in a comprehensive, frank and constructive manner. This
Symposium is possible only because of the African Development Forum
which begins tomorrow. The ADF is a remarkable event, which has
greatly enriched the level of debate and the quality of
consensus-making in Africa today, and we are pleased that this
Symposium is so closely connected with it.
This process has also been facilitated and is greatly enriched by
the support and participation of the OAU, symbolised by the
presence of the Secretary General who is here today, alongside the
active participation of Assistant Secretaries General, who are
making presentations in their respective fields. We acknowledge
this most genuine commitment, and their activism gives us the
confidence that it will be sustained.
The quest for unity in Africa is what brings us here. Unity in
Africa has a deep historical resonance: it was the goal of the
fathers of independence and has remained the basic aspiration of
African citizens across the continent. Political and economic unity
in Africa is not an alien idea, or a programme imposed from
outside. On the contrary, it springs from the very roots of African
identity, which has long resisted being arbitrarily divided into
national citizenships.
Today, at the dawn of the 21st century, Africa is once again at a
crossroads. The current environment is auspicious for change.
Within Africa, we are recognising the imperative of concerted,
serious change, if we are to achieve the most basic of our common
goals. Internationally, we now have international partners who have
come to recognise that they need a new way of doing business if
Africa is to begin to achieve its potential. At a continental
level, the African Union is the clear manifestation of our
collective demand for standing together and addressing our problems
in concert. Meanwhile, the New Partnership for Africa's
Development, NEPAD, holds out the promise of a dramatically
improved relationship with aid and trade partners, on the basis of
a clear and sustained commitment to good governance.
Africa has seen many false starts in the last few decades. How do
we know that this is not just another focus for misplaced
enthusiasm? Will the current initiatives fall by the wayside? Will
the world continue to mock Africa as the land of broken promises,
of criminalised and failed states that inevitably subvert the best
intentions of their peoples and their development partners? There
are some good reasons to hope that things may be different this
time around. The decisions for greater unity, for better
governance, for improved economic management, for greater
democracy, are made because of inescapable pressures, both internal
and external, that really force us to come to terms with the
collective realities that we are facing.
The root of our recovery at the national and subregional and
continental level is recognising what has gone wrong, and accepting
these realities. Societies that have solved their basic problems of
conflict and misgovernment have done so, first and foremost, by
allowing free debate and open exchange of ideas. Where there is
secrecy and censorship, there we see that corruption, conflict and
complacency thrive. Sunlight, they say, is the best disinfectant.
Our reality today is that just about everything that could go wrong
is going wrong with us. Let us begin by facing the difficult
realities of our continent: the fact that our economies are
crippled by corruption and mismanagement, that organised crime has
penetrated the highest levels of many governments, that many states
are adopting the language of democracy and human rights only with
the greatest reluctance, and that African institutions are weak and
incapable of delivering on their mandates. The HIV/AIDS pandemic is
a survival issue not just for tens of millions of Africans, but
also for some of our nations themselves. If we do not recognise
these realities in meetings such as this one, then we are making
ourselves irrelevant. Sadly, in the past, Africa's regional
organisations have tiptoed around reality, and have thereby made
themselves stagnant backwaters. Thank goodness there are reasons to
believe that things are changing. If we don't move forward we are
already left behind.
Across Africa, there is genuine commitment to solving the most
pressing problems facing us. Africans are supremely skilled at
surviving. Our people have managed to not only survive, but even to
build businesses and preserve vibrant communities, in countries
whose states have collapsed such as Somalia, or where the formal
economy has disintegrated, such as much of Congo. If we look at the
economic statistics for this continent, most of us should have
starved to death long ago. But we are resourceful and resilient: we
have a habit of confounding the worst predictions. The HIV/AIDS
pandemic will test those survival skills to the limit, but I have
no doubt that Africa will overcome this pandemic, hopefully sooner
rather than later.
But how are we to transform this expertise at coping into the
economic and governance capacity necessary to put Africa on the
road to conquering poverty and achieving democracy and human
rights, as well as integration and unity? There are high-level
initiatives, including the African Union and the idea of NEPAD. We
also see a steady accretion of best practices in the fields of
governance and development. For example, the OAU decision to refuse
to recognise governments that take power by unconstitutional means
is highly welcome. In the area of economic development, the idea
that donors should reduce conditionalities and make monitorable
long-term commitments to assisting countries on the basis of
democratic governance is now becoming accepted as best practice.
The real challenge we face is the practical application of these
principles. How can these be scaled up to bring effective,
sustainable change to the whole continent? This requires
institutional capacities and effective coalitions. We know
all-too-well that statements of intent are not enough on their own.
The history of modern Africa is littered with failed institutions
and initiatives that have not been followed through to completion,
of promises that have been broken. Building an effective African
Union will have a tremendous impact in breaking this cycle of
raised hopes and then disappointment.
In contrast to the past, governments should be mindful of the value
of civil society, which is an asset to the governance and
development of the continent. The history of Pan Africanism is
rooted in civil society and popular struggle, and the legitimacy of
the project of the African Union will depend on the extent to which
it can tap into this tradition of grassroots mobilisation.
Partnerships with civil society organisations should be an integral
part of the pan-African unification strategy, and not an
afterthought.
In June last year, the OAU held its first-ever joint meeting with
civil society organisations: we must build upon this with a
systematic programme of engagement between the African Union-across
all its institutions-and civil society organisations. One of our
priorities here in this Symposium and in the ADF that follows will
be to specify the modalities of this engagement.
Much the same holds for NEPAD, which is an initiative based on the
principle of good governance. We all agree with and support the
principles of NEPAD. But we also recognise that we can best ensure
success in meeting those commitments if there is civil society
engagement in setting the goals and strategies, and monitoring the
achievements of NEPAD.
To date, the process of setting up the African Union has caused
some discomfort among African CSOs. The Union is an arrangement
between states, and as such it is inevitably a sovereign process.
But at the same time it cannot be regarded simply as `business as
usual'. The rush to formalise the Union and set up its basic
institutions, and the exclusion (for the most part) of processes of
wider consultation makes many suspicious about the quality and
sustainability of the process. This does not make us any less
enthusiastic about unity: instead it makes us more determined that
it should succeed.
We have a number of concerns. One set relates to the ownership and
legitimacy of the process of establishing the Union. This should be
as open and inclusive as possible. Therefore we regard the African
Parliament, and the AU's Economic and Social Council, as the key
institutions that will set the Union apart from its predecessor,
the OAU. Setting up these institutions should be a priority. As the
recent East African experience indicates, elections to a parliament
are critical to the legitimacy of an international union.
A second concern is rational and workable institutions. The African
Union agenda is ambitious and we have no illusions that it can be
achieved quickly. Prioritisation and a focus on ensuring that each
task is delegated to the institution that can do it best should be
our watchwords. Thus, there are core functions of the AU that can
be done best at the level of national governments. Our priority
should be to ensure that these governments perform. But that
doesn't just mean leaving responsibility where it lies now: part of
the agenda of the African Union means that we are all our brothers'
keepers. The AU itself, plus its institutions and member states,
supplemented by CSOs, will have a key role in monitoring
governments' performance, ensuring that best practices are
followed, and making sure that standards are continually upgraded.
Related to this is the question of leadership. Building the African
Union demands visionary and capable leadership at national level,
and leadership of the regional institutions themselves.
There are other functions that are important inputs in terms of the
institutionalisation of the Union that are best done by others.
Civil society organisations, research centres and the private
sector all have their roles. So do sub-regional organisations, or
regional economic communities (RECs), which in many respects have
led the agenda of African unification over the last two decades.
Let us not dismantle anything that works or set up rival
institutions alongside it, let us instead support what is serving
our needs best. One of the challenges that we must address today is
how to make our regional and subregional organisations and
initiatives, many of them with overlapping mandates and
competencies, work effectively together.
One compelling reason for this incremental approach is its
affordability. The OAU is struggling financially because many of
its members are deep in arrears. How is the AU with its much more
ambitious structures to be financed? Is it likely that African
governments will dip into their meagre budgets for constructing a
new bureaucracy? Or do some of the governments with high disposal
income think that they can buy political loyalty by funding the
institutions?
Regional peace and security is an essential foundation for the
Union. Without it, our energies are wasted. Africa is still seeking
what works in terms of making peace and making peace sustainable.
The issue of peace and security has to go back to the basics, and
has to work at many different levels. One of the basics is trying
to get countries to define what they mean by national security, so
that there is the possibility of regional and international
engagement with security policies. Another demand is building
structures at the subregional and regional level. In both
instances, we will quickly see that security is too important an
issue to be left to the security services. Real security is
achieved when there is a deep national consensus on a country's
needs, and security matters are not entrusted to a small coterie of
individuals around the head of state and chief of the army. Civil
society should be engaged in defining national security. And the
best guarantee of regional peace and security is a regional
consensus on shared core values of democracy and neighbourliness,
values that are best achieved by the widest possible stakeholder
engagement.
Africans, more than at any other time, are yearning for the
deliverables, on democracy, development and institution-building.
African leaders have got away with too much because the
expectations of their citizens have been low. Most citizens no
longer take their governments' promises seriously. It is through a
process of ongoing, active engagement with civil society, including
the setting of goals and targets and the monitoring of progress,
that some of that cynicism can be overcome and some of the energy
redirected into the common causes of democracy and development.
That same process of engagement will also help civil society
understand the constraints under which governments are acting, and
perhaps refocus demands onto more modest but more deliverable
outcomes.
It is fortunate that the process of building the African Union is
still in its early stages. The early processes of adopting the
Union and ratifying the Act by national parliaments were
perfunctory and uninspiring, and were not even covered by the
media. This reflects the deep disillusion and cynicism of Africans
towards their leaders. But this can change. The process of setting
up the Union, if it is wider and more inclusive, can confer
credibility on African political processes. African sovereignty,
which is now so debased in some countries so as to be worthless
coin, can be reconstructed and re-infused with value by the process
of building the Union. We must ask how African governments can best
grapple with the dilution of sovereignty that the Union entails.
Let me turn to an important positive aspect of the African Union.
Some of the integration imperatives are real, simply because the
global situation demands them. Regional integration is an essential
stepping stone towards more effective and more equal participation
in the global economy.
Let me finish by underlining the importance of this one-day
symposium. It is the first time that we are having a meaningful
discussion on the challenges of the African Union. It is an
opportunity for a wide range of stakeholders to have an input into
debates on a range of key issues for the African Union and Africa's
regional integration and development prospects.
The Symposium is organised in the following manner. We will begin
the substantive part of the day's work with plenary presentations
by senior officials. We ask for them to be candid in treating the
shortcomings of the past and the problems of the present. For the
afternoon, we will then break into three breakout sessions for more
detailed discussion and input. These are, one, the economics of
regional integration, two, regional peace and security, and three,
the architecture of the African Union. The outcome will be a
statement for consideration at the ADF, which will also deal with
some of these issues, and which will have enduring relevance. One
area in which I am confident the declaration will be particularly
strong concerns linkages between the AU and civil society, and the
challenge of finding mechanisms to institutionalise and deepen this
engagement.
We challenge those who are here not to despair because they have
been marginalised up to now, but instead to enter the fray with
constructive criticism. We should see this exercise as the
beginning of a consultation that will continue over the coming
months and years. Concrete recommendations will come out of today's
deliberations, which will be fed into the ADF over the coming days,
and then into the OAU Council of Ministers and the AU Summit in
July. This is not a one-shot affair: we intend to follow up with
another consultation concerned specifically with NEPAD, and another
in advance of the Pretoria summit.
The African Union is too important to be an exclusive purview of
governments. This is not infringement of the sovereign exercise, it
is the solemn duty of African citizens and organisations to make it
their business to be engaged in building the African Union. It is
incumbent on governments to make the African Union a truly
inclusive and democratic project.
This material is being reposted for wider distribution by
Africa Action (incorporating the Africa Policy Information
Center, The Africa Fund, and the American Committee on Africa).
Africa Action's information services provide accessible
information and analysis in order to promote U.S. and
international policies toward Africa that advance economic,
political and social justice and the full spectrum of human rights.
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