The Future Of Afrıcan Unıon In The Global World

I would like, first of all, to thank the organizers of this forum for the op-portunity I have been given to share with you my thinking on "the future of African Union in the light of political developments". First, I will try to de¬fine African union by recalling the objectives of Pan-Africanism which is at the roots of African Union and try to show the importance of African integra-tion, in the era of globalization. Second, I will touch upon the challenges ahe-ad and finally I will discuss the way forward.

I. WHAT IS AFRICAN UNION?

1.1 a Litttle Historical Background

As a reminder, I wish to define Pan-Africanism, a movement whose ro-ots date more than a century back, from the time intellectuals of the African peoples and its diaspora became conscious of the fact that it was through the-ir unity that they could put an end to the political, economic and cultural do-mination under which they were living across the world. As you know, this domination is rooted in slavery and colonialism, which came up with a pretext to justify racial discrimination and apartheid against people of African origin. Pan-Africanism succeeded in its combat against colonialism and apartheid by placing unity among the peoples of Africa and its diaspora at the core of its li¬beration strategy. It is equally through the same unity that the continent will have the chance to develop economically and claim its rightful place in global political, economic and monetary affairs.

Nobody of good faith can deny the fact that Pan-Africanism made a sig-nificant contribution to the decolonisation of our continent and the eliminati¬

on of racial discrimination in America. It succeeded against colonialism be-cause it made African unity the focus of its combat.
In 1958, President Nkrumah organized a conference of African political parties within the context of what is known as the "All-African People's Or-ganization (AAPO)". On that occasion, declared that Pan-Africanism needed to go through the following four stages to attain its final goal: (a) political in-dependence; (b) consolidation of such independence; (c) establishment of a unit and community of African countries; and (d) economic and social recons-truction of Africa. However, Africa could not cross these stages so long as cer-tain countries remained under the yoke of colonialism. Hence, the need for al-ready independent African countries to work together to free the rest of the continent.

Notwithstanding the divergences among African leaders at the first AA-PO conference on the strategy to be adopted to achieve African Unity, clearly the great majority of them agreed on the need to mobilize all resources, inclu-ding international opinion, to free Africa from both colonization and aparthe-id. It is this common will that made it possible for the Organization of Afri-can Unity (OAU) to be established.

Everyone is aware of the fact that the participants at the inaugural As-sembly of OAU Heads of State and Government meeting in Addis Ababa from 22 to 25 May 1963, did not agree on the approach to be adopted to achieve the unity of our continent. The fact still remains that they all accepted to accele-rate the process of decolonising the rest of Africa and combating apartheid and racial discrimination. The Assembly equally urged participants to strengthen their cooperation in the domains of economic development, education, scien¬ce, culture and public health.

However, the need to achieve political and economic unity in the conti-nent lives on, as witnessed by the adoption, in 1980, of the Lagos Plan of Ac-tion and Final Act and the signing, in 1991, in Abuja, Nigeria, of the Treaty Establishing the African Economic Community through regional economic communities (RECs).

1.2 The Impact of Globalization
The transformation, in September 1999, of the OAU into the African Uni-on, was due to the realization, by African leaders, of the fact that Africa needs to speed up its integration in order to better face the various challenges resul-ting from the ongoing globalization process. It was equally necessary for Af-rica to mainstream with the trends towards greater integration taking root in other regions of the world, including Europe. As we all know, integration de-finitely means unity.

Globalization requires countries to be integrated at world level, that is to say mobility of goods, capital and ideas. Its advocates are convinced that the process is "irreversible", and advise all African countries to create an enabling institutional environment to benefit from it. Their argument is that all coun-tries of the world are "interdependent". Accordingly, this inter-independence requires all countries to eliminate all tariff and non-tariff barriers that could obstruct the free movement of goods, capital, ideas and knowledge.

If these arguments are true, two major conclusions could be drawn from
them. Firstly, the geographic and economic interdependence of African coun-tries warrants them to accelerate their integration if they want to take full ad-vantage of globalization. Secondly, to be fair, globalization should also enab-le the free movement of persons (labour) across the world. Unfortunately, no-body is demanding this freedom although African countries are being pushed to liberalize capital movements to attract foreign investment. As I usually sa-id, you can not have mobility of goods and services, mobility of capital, mo-bility of ideas without the mobility of labour. That is what I call the labour pa¬radox.

To satisfy the demands of globalization, African countries have, since the end of the 1980s, individually introduced the multi-party system and adopted structural adjustment programmes whose implementation has not yielded the expected outcomes. The small size of African economies is one of the factors hindering African countries from being able to overcome economic and soci-al under-development as some Asian and Latin American countries have done within the context of globalization.

Africa needs to adopt a collective approach to the demands of globaliza-tion. This means that only a united Africa could take advantage of the globa-lization process. In fact, a country should have a relatively large domestic market for its economic activities to be viable. Its population will determine the size of such a market.

II. CHALLENGES AHEAD tO INTEGRATION

2.1 The Povertty Trap

Africa has a total population of about 900 million inhabitants. But the fact that this population belongs to 54 different countries considerably wea-kens Africa's position in the global arena. It should be underscored that from among these 54 countries, 42 each have less than 20 million inhabitants, and 30 each have less than 10 million inhabitants. Obviously, with such a popula-tion size, most African countries are unable to individually succeed in facing the challenges posed by globalization.

Africa is the poorest continent in the world and by some accounts it is poorer that it was 25 years ago. Of the 176 countries classified in the United Nations' Human Development Report 2004, 52 African countries out of 54 ranked among the last 76 in the world. According to World Economic Forum, ten percent of the world's poor were in Africa in 1970 and fifty percent were in Africa by 2000.

With the exception of the Comoros, island countries such as Cape Verde, Mauritius and the Seychelles are on average wealthier than the continental co¬untries. In recent years, poverty has led to low life expectancy, internal conf-licts and political instability in Africa. The poorest countries are those enga-ged in or emerging from internal armed conflicts. These have included in the recent past the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sierra Leone, Burundi, and Somalia. Conflicts between African countries or regions have also contributed to an increase in the level of poverty. This has certainly been the case in Ethi-opia, Eritrea and Darfur the Region of Sudan.

It is also important to note that income inequality is pronounced in most African countries with urban areas being always wealthier than rural ones. In addition, a tiny upper class controls a larger portion of national wealth than that of the vast majority of the populations in almost all countries.

Presently, more than 60% of people in Africa derive their livelihood from the agricultural sector. This percentage makes Africa more reliant on agricul-tural activities than any other continent in the world. About 60% of African farmers are engaged in "subsistence farming" to feed their families, with only a very small surplus that can be exchanged for other goods.

Unlike some Asian and Latin American countries, which have been suc-cessful in lifting millions of people out of the subsistence income levels, Af-rica, with the exception of a few oil-producing countries has stagnated and even regressed in terms of commercial exchanges with the rest of the world, the level of investment activity, and income per head.

Africa's current situation is partly explained by its history. Political independence was one of the consequences of World War II and of the Cold War that followed. The competition between the two competing blocks in the world led to despotic regimes and widespread corruption in the vast majority of African countries. Corruption and the lack of accountability contributed to

the mismanagement of the public resources and to the weak performance of national economies in Africa and to widespread poverty.

2.2 The Different Strategies to African Integration

In the process of implementing the Syrte declaration of 1999 on the spee-ding of the process of integration, some divergences appear clearly within Af-rican countries.

Despite the momentum created in the aftermath of the inception of the African Union, concerns persist concerning the Continent's political, econo-mic and monetary future. Many countries continue to evoke their national so-vereignty to resist the exigencies of integration.

The population trend could also constitute a source of divergence to in-tegration. Currently, 40% of the African population, estimated at 900 million, is living in 4 countries (Nigeria, Egypt, Ethiopia and the DRC) which cover less than 20% of our Continent's total surface area. According to available fo-recasts, the African population will reach 2 billion in 2050, resulting in very high population density in the four above-mentioned countries. This imbalan-ce in population density between different African countries could lead to un-controllable migratory movements. But also, it put those countries in some inf-luencial political positions within Africa. Therefore, their own political inte-rest can delay Africa's integration.

Finally, despite the fact that poverty is widespread in Africa, it is impor-tant to point out that there is considerable variation in the distribution of we-alth among African countries. The richest areas are the extreme north and so¬uth of the continent. North Africa has generally benefited from its close links with the economies of Europe and the Middle East. South Africa, a former "settler colony" is by far the wealthiest African country, both in terms of total gross domestic product (GDP) and GDP per inhabitant. As a matter of course, those richest countries are politically powerful in Africa. They contribute to more than 50% of the budget of African Union.

III. A WAY FORWARD: the Urgent Necessity to Strengthen the AAfrican Union Commission

By political integration, we mean first the harmonization and then the unification of the different branches of the systems of government existing in Member States. The three branches that should be unified are the Executive, the Judiciary and the Legislative. Of course, there are many questions that co-uld be raised concerning political integration in Africa. Is it necessary to adopt a single model of government for all African countries before envisaging the Continent's political integration? Or can political integration be achieved ba-sed on existing systems whose constitutional frameworks, electoral and judi-ciary systems differ? This question is pertinent because it calls for reflection on the progress that must be achieved in order to politically integrate Africa.

Pending a decision by the Heads of State and Government on these issu-es, the relevance of the existing organs of the African Union should be consi-dered in relation to the objectives of political integration. The African Union provided for 9 organs in its Constitutive Act adopted in Lome in July 2000. Among these organs, 4 prepare the decisions that the Heads of State and Go¬vernment take during their Assemblies, namely: (1) the Executive Council; (2) the Permanent Representatives Committee; (3) the Specialized Technical Committees; and (4) the Commission. However, although the Commission is currently charged with the «administration of the affairs of the African Uni¬on», it does not really have executive powers within the structures of the Af-rican Union.

In 2004, to discharge the mandate entrusted to it, the Commission of the African Union elaborated the Vision of the African Union and the Mission of the African Union Commission.

It is therefore necessary to transform the Commission into an «Executi-ve» of the African Union by entrusting it with exclusive spheres of competen-ce at continental level. These areas could include: (i) environmental problems resulting from climate change; (ii) problems linked to the scarcity of energy resources; (iii) the development of infrastructure at continental level; (iv) pea-ce and security issues; (v) the respect of human rights; and (vi) the manage¬ment of strategic partnerships with the rest of the world.

Concerning other branches of government at continental level, that is, the African Court of Justice and the Pan-African Parliament, it should be recogni-zed that their establishment does not necessarily mean that they are the result of an integration process. Nonetheless, the way in which they can be reconci-led with the judiciary and parliamentary systems of Member States should be explored.

With regard to economic integration, it consists in making African eco-nomies develop towards a common market. A common market is defined asa customs union where labour and capital can move freely. The establishment of a customs union entails the prior establishment of free trade areas among the countries concerned. In conformity with the recommendations of the Abu-ja Treaty, Africa should make Regional Economic Communities (RECs) the building blocks of its economic integration.

This approach raises a number of substantive issues. First, what criteria enable a group of African countries to form a REC? Second, what mechanism will make it possible to progress from regional markets to a common continen-tal market, considering the lack of harmonization of integration policies app-lied by the different regions, contrary to the scenario provided for under the Abuja Treaty? Third, is it reasonable to hope to achieve the economic integ-ration of the Continent when some countries continue to belong to several RECs? Fourth, how can we reconcile our economic integration policy with the «Economic Partnership Agreements» that Europe insistently proposes to us within the framework of the implementation of the Cotonou Partnership Ag-reement? Fifth, is it necessary for each REC to have the same organs as the Af¬rican Union to attain its objective of economic integration? Otherwise, why do we need an Assembly of Heads of State and Government and a Council of Mi-nisters in each REC?

It is essential that in the application of economic integration measures, responsibilities should be shared between the government of Member States, the RECS and the African Union. This sharing, which should be based on the principle of subsidiarity, should give a space to AU program of NEPAD that needs to be reformed. If all the uncertainties concerning the future of the 8 RECs recognized by the AU are not dispelled, it will be difficult to simulta-neously carry out the political and economic integration of Africa.

Concerning Africa's monetary integration, is it provided for under Artic-le 19 of the Constitutive Act of the African Union which recommends the es-tablishment of an African Central Bank (ACB), an African Investment Bank (AIB) and an African Monetary Fund (AMF).

IV. CONCLUSION: What Strategies to Adopt with Regard to the Trends of Political Developments According to Fukayama, we are at the end of history. Democracy and market economy will bring peace and prosperity to the whole world, of cour-se under the leadership of United States. This is the logic of the empire. Uni¬ted States will dictate to the world population how to achieve democracy and market economy, if necessary by force.

However it is becoming clearer that China will become a world superpo-wer in the next 25 years. And some analysts are adding a few more countries like India, Brazil, Russia. In total we may have America( United States, Cana-da, Mexico), Europe, Russia, Brazil or Mercosur, India, China on the table to decide on the future of humanity.

In any case, whether an American empire or a world of 6 superpowers, the fact of the matter is Africa may be absent, plus the Arab world and the Is-lamic world at large. It is utmost therefore that Africa be united as Nkrumah already said. Individual country in a poverty trap will not be allowed to seat at the "deciding table". And a strategic alliance may be explored between Afri-ca, the Arab world or the Islamic world.