Africa: Stuffing Old Wine in New Bottles?

By Kwame Akonor.

’A bunch of broomsticks is not as easily broken as a single stick’ -
African proverb.

As the African Union (AU) enters its fifth year of existence, it is
rather fitting that it has devoted its annual summit to be a ’Grand
Debate on the Union Government’.

Since its inception on 9 July 2002,
at Durban, South Africa, there have been conflicting perspectives on
the AU’s role in Africa’s development. Africa’s political elite, and
supporters of the AU, generally argue that the new institution would
enhance the economic, political and social integration and
development of African people.

A great deal of Africa’s civil society
however are not so optimistic: they perceive the AU as a mere
continuation of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) under a
different name.

This essay argues that while the futuristic idea of an African
superstate is a necessary and desirable alternative to the
contemporary reality of an Africa of states, the political union of
African states can only come to fruition if the lessons of OAU’s
failures are fully mastered.

At the heart of the OAU’s failings was not so much a structural as an
ideological shortcoming. The OAU lacked a cohesive ideology that
could provide the proper situational interpretation of the African
context. Ideologies not only rationalise and explain the reasons for
a given situation; they also provide strategies toward future goals.
(Zartman, 1966, p. 38). What the OAU lacked then was an ideology
capable of rationalising and explaining Africa’s balkanisation,
dependency and underdevelopment, and an ideology capable of providing
strategies that would guarantee and enhance Africa’s power, prestige
and progress in the postcolonial era.

Which ideology is capable of filling this vacuum? Pan-Africanism!
Ofuatey-Kodjoe (1986) defines Pan-Africanism as an ideology with a
cognitive component that recognises all African peoples, both in
Africa and the diaspora, as being of one folk or nation, as a result
of a shared cultural identity, a shared historical experience, and an
indivisible future destiny (p. 391). And he goes on to argue, that
the most fundamental goal of Pan-Africanism is the commitment to the
collective empowerment of African peoples, wherever they are (p.
391). Thus, it must be quickly added that calling oneself Pan-
Africanist does not make one so, and being of African descent does
not automatically make a person a Pan-Africanist. Indeed, most of the
OAU founders of yesteryear, and the AU founders of today, label
themselves Pan-Africanist, without any appreciably clarity and
commitment to the ideology of Pan-Africanism.

By rejecting the brand of Pan-Africanism advocated by the Casablanca
group, the OAU at its birth, consciously or not, gave its blessings
to the colonial political and economic formation - together with its
ideological and cultural systems. Indeed, the final curse of African
independence, and the OAU’s ascendancy, was that it solidified the
balkanisation and dependency inherited from colonialism. The problem
was compounded when the Casablanca group rather than opting out of
the OAU decided to remain in it, perhaps for fear of isolation.
Ghana’s Nkrumah, a staunch advocate of the Casablanca thinking, on
arrival from the OAU’s inaugural summit even remarked triumphantly
that ’the political unification of the African continent, my lifelong
dream, is finally here’. (cited in Rooney, 1988, p. 223).

But of course, this was not the case; his Pan African ideal of a
continental African government had been soundly rejected. And it also
did not help much that none of the 22 countries, newly independent
since the OAU’s founding, refused to join. Some newly independent
countries joined the OAU merely for geographic reasons, well aware of
the organisation’s impotence. Eritrea, OAU’s last but one newest
member, when joining the OAU in 1993 declared: ’we are joining the
OAU not because of your achievement, but because you are our African
brothers (Afeworki 1993). According to Eritrea’s Issaias Afeworki,
membership of the OAU was ’not spiritually gratifying or politically
challenging [because] the OAU has become a nominal organization that
has failed to deliver on its pronounced goals and objectives’.
(Afeworki 1993). Nevermind that the OAU had failed to support
Eritrea’s bloody 30-year struggle for independence (the continent’s
longest civil war) from Ethiopia, incidentally the seat of the OAU
headquarters.

Not surprisingly, the OAU became a geographical entity with no
geopolitical weight. It forged a unity that further deepened the
political marginalisation, economic dependence, and cultural doubt of
the continent; the very antithesis of Pan-Africanism. The lesson here
is that a union cannot be effective without ideological uniformity or
unity of purpose. For while it is necessary for all Africa and
Africans to unite, there is no point to this project if the result is
a united Africa with divergent and confusing perspectives on the
goals of unity, or a united Africa where consensus on a shared
African worldview is elusive.

From a Pan-Africanist perspective therefore, it is better to have a
united, empowered and independent Africa, comprising some African
states, rather than to have a united, but weak and dependent Africa,
comprising of all African states.

The old patterns persist

Unfortunately, like the OAU before it, an overwhelming majority of
the AU’s founding members, eschew any genuine commitment and
seriousness to the Pan-African ideal of an empowered African
superstate that would increase the capacity of Africans to take
direct control of their destinies. The preference for the status quo
was made apparent during the Sirte Summit in September 1999, when
African leaders, once again, retreated from the continental
government thesis. While Libya’s Qathafi (1999) argued passionately
for a transformative entity, in the form of a confederation of
African states, as a `historical solution’ to the continent’s
numerous problems, an overwhelming number of his fellow African
leaders remained deeply skeptical about his vision of a `United
States of Africa’.

Qathafi’s plea that African leaders ’give up a little bit of their
sovereignty in the interests of the whole of Africa’ was not even
entertained as a realisable goal (Pompey 2000; Rosine 1999). The
leaders of Egypt, Kenya and Uganda spoke for many when they said
publicly that the idea of an African superstate was premature
(Kipkoech 1999; Rosine 1999). Granted, Qathafi’s Arabic persuasion
may predispose him to use non-African cultural perspectives, rather
than an African centred paradigm, as a basis for defining a better
world vision. Be that as it may, his call for an African superstate,
like that of the Casablanca bloc of the 1960s, is a central pan-
africanist strategy to achieving collective power in the contemporary
international system.

Needless to say, the AU that was created has limited authority and
coercive powers capable of changing the behavior of member states.
Furthermore, since its ideological underpinnings does not promise the
eventual collective acquisition of power, the AU cannot be expected
to significantly transform the lives of Africans for the better. When
we consider the AU’s current efforts in the areas of security,
economics, and politics, it becomes obvious, but not surprising, that
these are contrary to the fundamental goal of Pan-Africanism.

In the area of security and the preservation of peace, the formation
of a single African High Command is considered central to the
fundamental Pan-Africanist objective of collective empowerment.
First, it is logical from a Pan-Africanist perspective to have one
army to manage conflicts on the continent and to maximise the power
of Africa, relative to other actors, in the international system.
Africa has a combined 3,500,000 men and women in its armed forces, a
number that any power bloc would be forced to reckon with. Secondly,
an African High Command would help to reduce the military
expenditures of individual African countries and divert such
expenditures to much needed social services. Taken together, African
countries spend in excess of US$20 billion annually on the military.
A significant reduction in such spending would result if Africa had
an efficient joint force and a central command. However, Muammar Al
Qathafi’s call, since 1975, for abolishing national armies to create
a single African army has been constantly rebuffed by his
counterparts. The last time his idea was rebuffed was at the AU’s
extraordinary summit in March 2004.

At this summit, a watered down version of Qathafi’s single army
proposal, based on the maintenance of each African state’s
independence and sovereignty, was created instead. The creation of
the African Standby Force (as this force is known) represents a
marked departure from the OAU days. However there are numerous
problems with its structures, important amongst these are: the lack
of mechanisms to counter unilateral action of strong member
countries; the non-veto power decision making structure; and the
selection and inclusion of conflict prone countries as force members.
Egyptian Foreign Minister, Ahmed Maher, later told reporters after
the AU Summit that delegates rejected the Qathafi’s proposal because
’Africa is not ready yet for this [single African army] idea’ (quoted
in Pitman 2004).

Regarding economics, the strategies and programs pursued by the AU
and its member states indicate continued reliance on international
capital and the uncoordinated development of individual national
economies. No real attempt has been made to achieve continental
African economic unity despite the obvious economic wisdom of such an
approach. The observation by Green and Seidman (1968), almost four
decades ago, is still true today:

’Africa as a whole could provide markets able to support large-scale
efficient industrial complexes; no single African state nor existing
sub-regional economic union can do so. African states cannot
establish large-scale productive complexes stimulating demand
throughout the economy as poles of rapid economic growth because
their markets are far too small. Instead the separate tiny economies
willy-nilly plan on lines leading to the dead ends of excessive
dependence on raw material exports and small scale inefficient
`national factories’ at high costs per unit of output. Inevitably,
therefore, they fail to reduce substantially their basic dependence
on foreign markets, complex manufactures and capital.’ (Green and
Seidman, 1968, p. 22)

It should be noted that the specific economic policies pursued by the
majority of African states are determined largely by the
International Monetary Fund and other international financial
institutions (IFIs), who demand explicit commitments from governments
to implement remedial policies that the IFIs deem essential to the
continued disbursement of loans. The impact of these structural
adjustment conditionalities, while mostly negative, compromises the
economic autonomy of African countries.

The AU’s economic blueprint, the New Partnership for Africa’s
Development (NEPAD 2001) does not veer off the path traveled by the
individual African member states: it too sees international capital
and the separate development of national economies as a panacea.
NEPAD has serious flaws, too many to list here (for a concise
critique, see Taylor and Nel 2002).

From a Pan-Africanist viewpoint however, NEPAD’s biggest failing is
that it does not sufficiently recognise African peoples as partners
for, and of, development. As it stands now, NEPAD is an appeal to the
goodwill and benevolence of the industrialised countries for aid and
investment. Even so, NEPAD is an elite driven process that provides
no means for mobilising the African masses for real development. The
AU’s interest in securing international capital and maintaining neo-
colonial relationship with the West, (rather than pursuing genuine
inter-African cooperation), led the authors of NEPAD to consult first
with the G8 industrialised countries, before African governments had
had a chance to discuss it amongst themselves and with their own
people. There is even talk of constructing a tunnel linking Africa
with Europe.

Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade (2002), one of the authors and
spokesperson for NEPAD has said: ’NEPAD plans to construct a tunnel
linking Africa to Europe under the Mediterranean Sea from the
northern tip of Algeria through to Gibraltar.’

What about a much needed railroad or highway linking the continent,
from Algiers to Antananarivo? The fact that NEPAD was conceived by a
small group of African leaders, without any input from the masses,
coupled with the rush to the G8 (G8 2002) for the programe’s
endorsement, made several AU leaders question the wisdom of the
entire enterprise. One such critic was Gambia’s president, Yahya
Jammeh, who said: ’People are sick and tired of African beggars.
Nobody will ever develop your country for you. I am not criticising
NEPAD, but the way it was conceived to be dependent on
begging’ (Lokongo 2002, p. 18).

Needless to say, NEPAD, as presently constituted, has the potential
of dividing, not unifying, Africa: The G8, on which the AU relies for
the programme’s major funding, has already made it clear that it
would only help African countries ’whose performance reflects the
NEPAD commitments’ (G8 2002). Western nations can thus pick and
choose which AU member states are deserving of assistance, and those
that are not. The overall effect would not be a stronger Africa. At
best, it would reward individual African countries for good
behaviour. Thus one cannot expect NEPAD to transform Africa from its
disarticulated, dependent and underdeveloped status.

When it comes to politics, it has been established that the AU’s
founding majority has no desire for a supranational political entity
that would lead to a full and complete African unity. Africa today
therefore does not have one state to represent it or a single voice
to articulate its concerns in the international system; hence no
power. Also, the political map of African remains a sacred cow
despite the fact that Africa’s 165 demarcated borders (the world’s
most fragmented region) have in of themselves become the basis of
many African conflicts. Unfortunately, Article 4(b) of the AU
Constitutive Act, like Article 3(3) of the OAU charter before it,
affirms these colonial demarcations.

The AU should amend the principle of inviolability of the colonial
borders and negotiate new boundaries that have more meaning for
Africans. It must be borne in mind that the carving up of Africa in
1884 was not meant to unify, but rather to divide the continent.
These are by no means easy political choices, but African leaders
have to confront them before any real chance of optimising Africa’s
power can be realised.

Politically, it seems what binds the AU is a professed commitment to
democracy and good governance. Even on this score, the AU’s efforts
so far have, at best, been confused. This is because the AU has no
established criteria on what constitutes `good governance’ or
`democracy’, beyond the minimalist procedural requisites of free and
fair elections.

At its inaugural launch in July 2001, the AU barred Madagascar from
the new organisation and refused to recognise Ravalomanana as
Madagascar’s new president, citing the contentious nature of the
elections and the unorthodox way Mr. Ravalomanana consolidated his
’victory’. The AU maintained that it would admit Madagascar only if
fresh presidential elections were held. That the AU showed resolve
early, on a key principle on which it was founded is noteworthy. But
it appears, in this particular case, that the resolve shown was not
carefully thought through. Madagascar’s Supreme Court ruling that
Ravalomanana’s victory and government were legitimate, coupled with
dissent among AU members on the issue, should have given the AU pause
and deep reflection on its decision.

Not long after AU’s decision, several African countries (Senegal,
Burkina Faso, Mauritius, Libya and the Comoros islands) broke ranks
with the AU and endorsed Ravalomanana’s government - so much for
Africa speaking with a single voice! The AU did a face saving U-turn
and recognised Ravalomanana the following year, a move which no doubt
has cost AU some credibility, especially since no new presidential
elections were held.

In any case, on the democracy question, the AU does not have much
credibility to begin with: African leaders do not easily give up the
reins of power, and represent some of the world’s longest-serving
presidents. The following sample proves the point: Gabon’s Omar Bongo
Ondimba has been at the helm of his nation for 40 years. Libya has
been under Muammar Al Qathafi for 38 years. Angola’s Jose Eduardo dos
Santos has 28 years under his belt. Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe has been
in power for 27 years.

If the AU were serious about democratic values and good governance,
membership of that body should not have been automatic, but rather,
granted on merit or a set of political criteria. For example, the
basic membership prerequisites of the European Union (after which the
AU is modelled) has three basic thematic criteria - political,
economic and institutional - also known as the Copenhagen Criteria),
where the political criteria directs the applicant country to achieve
stability of its institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of
law, human rights and respect for and protection of minorities.

What the AU needs now is clear and consistent guidelines on what it
considers to be the consent of the governed and enforcement
mechanisms to ensure strict compliance. Ideally, the democratic
principles advocated must be compatible with the values and practices
of the African society.

More than Pan-Africanism

Aside from the lack of, and/or commitment to, a transformative and
empowering ideology based on Pan-Africanism, the OAU did not
flourish, due to operational failures caused by a lack of popular
legitimacy, administrative bottlenecks and financial stress. I will
only discuss here the issue of popular legitimacy.

A major hurdle to the OAU’s efficacy was that it was a state-centric
elite political organisation that did little to involve the average
African in its operations and decision making. Consequently, it had a
flag and an anthem that no one saluted or recognised, and an Africa
Day that was hardly celebrated.

As indicated, the AU promises citizen involvement and participation.
Especially the Pan African Parliament (PAP) holds promise of broadly
representing the African citizenry. Though in its first five years of
existence, the Pan African Parliament is to have advisory and
consultative powers only. A lot more can be done to make it an
effective body by 2007, when it assumes legislative functions.

First, the PAP representation should be broadened with respect to
gender, the African diaspora constituency and cross-national party
coalitions. The seat currently allocated to women members in the PAP
now stands at 20 per cent. This can be said to be a good beginning,
however, there is room for improvement as this 20 per cent quota is
10 per cent less than that which the Fourth UN Conference on Women
urged as minimum for women parliamentarians. While it is true that
representation of women in African national parliaments is scarce, it
is not unreasonable to increase their quota, especially if we
consider the fact that African women hold the keys to Africa’s
overall development.

Next, is the issue of diaspora representation. Following a proposal
by the Senegalese government that diaspora Africans be considered the
’Sixth Region’ of Africa, the AU has been working on the
institutional development of the African diaspora in organs. This is
a move in the right direction, toward the pan-africanist goal of an
empowered African collective at the global level.

The challenge the AU faces is to clearly define the criteria for
membership of the African diaspora, its rights, duties and
privileges. The African diaspora constituency must be accorded real
and tangible (and not merely symbolic) membership. Their
representation in the PAP will signal that the AU is serious in its
efforts to integrate the continent and the diaspora.

A final area where PAP representation can be made more inclusive is
to provide mechanisms that allow the development of continent-wide
political groupings, as opposed to national parties now envisaged for
the PAP. Should this occur, the PAP members could form coalitions
along ideological and tactical directions such as workers, pan-
Africanists, liberals, socialists, conservatives etc.

Conclusion

The AU will continue, in the foreseeable future, to be an important
vehicle for addressing the continent’s numerous projects. But the AU
cannot empower and develop Africa, nor guarantee Africa’s collective
security, nor provide a common platform for Africa’s collective
diplomacy if the AU remains the way it is today: bereft of a genuine
commitment to Pan-Africanism and an empowered African superstate.

Moving beyond this status quo would require, amongst other things,
leaders who share a pan-Africanist commitment, and who are willing to
engage the African citizenry in a search for solutions that preserves
Africa’s independence and dignity: strategies which reflect Africa’s
image and interests. As we have seen, much work must be done before
the dream of the collective empowerment of all African peoples comes
true; until then, the dream of African unity remains only a mirage.

*Dr. Kwame Akonor is director of the African Development Institute
(ADI), a New York based think tank that advocates self-reliant and
endogenous development policies for Africa. He is also Assistant
Professor of International Relations at Seton Hall University, and
acting Chair of the Africana Studies Department.

Source: Pambazuka News.

Photo: Current AU Chairman, president Kufuor of Ghana.