Challenges for the African Union

SYMPOSIUM ON THE AFRICAN UNIONOrganised 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, theformation of the African Union. The creation of political and economic unity across the Africancontinent has been a dream of Africans for many decades, and realising this dream is a greatresponsibility that falls upon African leaders today. For ordinary Africans, unity is a powerfulimpulse. I hope that this Symposium today, organised by InterAfrica Group and Justice Africa, canplay 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 ExecutiveSecretary, Lala Ben Barka, for the opportunity of convening this Symposium on the African Union. Iwould like to congratulate them for their enthusiasm and their exceptional commitment to ensuringthat the substantive issues are discussed in a comprehensive, frank and constructive manner. ThisSymposium 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 closelyconnected with it.

This process has also been facilitated and is greatly enriched by the support and participation of theOAU, symbolised by the presence of the Secretary General who is here today, alongside the activeparticipation of Assistant Secretaries General, who are making presentations in their respectivefields. We acknowledge this most genuine commitment, and their activism gives us the confidencethat 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 Africancitizens across the continent. Political and economic unity in Africa is not an alien idea, or aprogramme 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 currentenvironment 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 anew 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 andaddressing 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 justanother focus for misplaced enthusiasm? Will the current initiatives fall by the wayside? Will theworld continue to mock Africa as the land of broken promises, of criminalised and failed states thatinevitably subvert the best intentions of their peoples and their development partners? There aresome 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, aremade because of inescapable pressures, both internal and external, that really force us to come toterms with the collective realities that we are facing.

The root of our recovery at the national and subregional and continental level is recognising whathas 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 openexchange of ideas. Where there is secrecy and censorship, there we see that corruption, conflictand 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 usbegin by facing the difficult realities of our continent: the fact that our economies are crippled bycorruption and mismanagement, that organised crime has penetrated the highest levels of manygovernments, that many states are adopting the language of democracy and human rights only withthe 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, butalso for some of our nations themselves. If we do not recognise these realities in meetings such asthis one, then we are making ourselves irrelevant. Sadly, in the past, Africa’s regional organisationshave tiptoed around reality, and have thereby made themselves stagnant backwaters. Thankgoodness there are reasons to believe that things are changing. If we don’t move forward we arealready 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 evento build businesses and preserve vibrant communities, in countries whose states have collapsedsuch as Somalia, or where the formal economy has disintegrated, such as much of Congo. If welook 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. TheHIV/AIDS pandemic will test those survival skills to the limit, but I have no doubt that Africa willovercome this pandemic, hopefully sooner rather than later.

But how are we to transform this expertise at coping into the economic and governance capacitynecessary to put Africa on the road to conquering poverty and achieving democracy and humanrights, as well as integration and unity? There are high-level initiatives, including the African Unionand 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 governmentsthat take power by unconstitutional means is highly welcome. In the area of economicdevelopment, the idea that donors should reduce conditionalities and make monitorable long-termcommitments to assisting countries on the basis of democratic governance is now becomingaccepted as best practice.

The real challenge we face is the practical application of these principles. How can these be scaledup to bring effective, sustainable change to the whole continent? This requires institutionalcapacities and effective coalitions. We know all-too-well that statements of intent are not enough ontheir own. The history of modern Africa is littered with failed institutions and initiatives that have notbeen 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 thendisappointment.

In contrast to the past, governments should be mindful of the value of civil society, which is anasset to the governance and development of the continent. The history of Pan Africanism is rootedin civil society and popular struggle, and the legitimacy of the project of the African Union willdepend on the extent to which it can tap into this tradition of grassroots mobilisation. Partnershipswith civil society organisations should be an integral part of the pan-African unification strategy, andnot an afterthought.

 

In June last year, the OAU held its first-ever joint meeting with civil society organisations: we mustbuild upon this with a systematic programme of engagement between the African Union—across allits institutions—and civil society organisations. One of our priorities here in this Symposium and inthe 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 bestensure success in meeting those commitments if there is civil society engagement in setting thegoals and strategies, and monitoring the achievements of NEPAD.

To date, the process of setting up the African Union has caused some discomfort among AfricanCSOs. The Union is an arrangement between states, and as such it is inevitably a sovereignprocess. But at the same time it cannot be regarded simply as ‘business as usual’. The rush toformalise 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 theprocess. This does not make us any less enthusiastic about unity: instead it makes us moredetermined 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 setthe Union apart from its predecessor, the OAU. Setting up these institutions should be a priority. Asthe recent East African experience indicates, elections to a parliament are critical to the legitimacyof an international union.

 A second concern is rational and workable institutions. The African Union agenda is ambitious andwe have no illusions that it can be achieved quickly. Prioritisation and a focus on ensuring that eachtask is delegated to the institution that can do it best should be our watchwords. Thus, there arecore functions of the AU that can be done best at the level of national governments. Our priorityshould be to ensure that these governments perform. But that doesn’t just mean leavingresponsibility 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 arefollowed, and making sure that standards are continually upgraded.

Related to this is the question of leadership. Building the African Union demands visionary andcapable 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 Unionthat are best done by others. Civil society organisations, research centres and the private sector allhave 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 usnot dismantle anything that works or set up rival institutions alongside it, let us instead support whatis 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 mandatesand competencies, work effectively together.

One compelling reason for this incremental approach is its affordability. The OAU is strugglingfinancially because many of its members are deep in arrears. How is the AU with its much moreambitious structures to be financed? Is it likely that African governments will dip into their meagrebudgets for constructing a new bureaucracy? Or do some of the governments with high disposalincome 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 arewasted. 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 differentlevels. One of the basics is trying to get countries to define what they mean by national security, sothat 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 willquickly see that security is too important an issue to be left to the security services. Real security isachieved when there is a deep national consensus on a country’s needs, and security matters arenot entrusted to a small coterie of individuals around the head of state and chief of the army. Civilsociety should be engaged in defining national security. And the best guarantee of regional peaceand 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 theexpectations 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 cynicismcan be overcome and some of the energy redirected into the common causes of democracy anddevelopment. That same process of engagement will also help civil society understand theconstraints under which governments are acting, and perhaps refocus demands onto more modestbut more deliverable outcomes.

It is fortunate that the process of building the African Union is still in its early stages. The earlyprocesses of adopting the Union and ratifying the Act by national parliaments were perfunctory anduninspiring, and were not even covered by the media. This reflects the deep disillusion andcynicism of Africans towards their leaders. But this can change. The process of setting up theUnion, if it is wider and more inclusive, can confer credibility on African political processes. Africansovereignty, which is now so debased in some countries so as to be worthless coin, can bereconstructed 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 integrationimperatives are real, simply because the global situation demands them. Regional integration is anessential stepping stone towards more effective and more equal participation in the globaleconomy.

Let me finish by underlining the importance of this one-day symposium. It is the first time that weare having a meaningful discussion on the challenges of the African Union. It is an opportunity for awide range of stakeholders to have an input into debates on a range of key issues for the AfricanUnion and Africa’s regional integration and development prospects.

The Symposium is organised in the following manner. We will begin the substantive part of theday’s work with plenary presentations by senior officials. We ask for them to be candid in treatingthe shortcomings of the past and the problems of the present. For the afternoon, we will then breakinto three breakout sessions for more detailed discussion and input. These are, one, the economicsof regional integration, two, regional peace and security, and three, the architecture of the AfricanUnion. The outcome will be a statement for consideration at the ADF, which will also deal withsome of these issues, and which will have enduring relevance. One area in which I am confidentthe declaration will be particularly strong concerns linkages between the AU and civil society, andthe 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 thebeginning 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 thecoming days, and then into the OAU Council of Ministers and the AU Summit in July. This is not aone-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 notinfringement of the sovereign exercise, it is the solemn duty of African citizens and organisations tomake it their business to be engaged in building the African Union. It is incumbent on governmentsto make the African Union a truly inclusive and democratic project.