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The African Union: A Mirage or a Higher Stage in the Process of African Integration? 

Demessie Fantaye*

The Heads of State Extraordinary Summit of the African Union was held in February 2003 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The occasion raises in everyone’s mind tantalising questions that need reflection, debates and an agenda for research for research: Is the African Union (AU any different from its predecessor, the Organisation of African Unity (OAU)? What will the AU deliver that the OAU could not? What are the prospects for economic and political integration of Africa under the AU?

The emergence of the African Union (AU) at the African Heads of State and Government Extraordinary Summit in Sirte, Libya, on the 2nd of March 2001 has been viewed as the logical culmination of a long process. For many, the process seemed to herald the beginning of the conclusion of the process of African integration, which for most began with the emergence and articulation of the ideas and programs of the Pan Africanist movement during the heydays of European colonialism.

The Pan-Africanist movement at its birth was a movement centred in the African Diaspora and its initial focus was a cultural and psychological quest for identity and self-esteem. It was only later that the movement turned its energies to Africa and its peoples. The end of the Second World War in 1945 indicated a turn in the history of the Pan Africanist movement, which turned its attention to the struggles for independence in Africa.

The next turning point in the history of Pan-Africanism revolves around the formation of blocs of independent African states whose one difference is their conception of the modalities of African unity and integration. The formation of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) in 1963 represents the victory of one of these conceptions over another one that called for a “Federalist/Political Union”. The formation of the OAU and its underlying principles seemed to institutionalise the African state system and the initiation of the experiment with the “Functionalist” approach to African unity centred on regional economic cooperation and integration.

The 1970s witnessed another change: the regimes and political classes increasingly came to the conclusion that the regional economic communities were not achieving all that had been envisaged. Thus the stage was set for a fast track approach to a continent-wide economic union. This was reflected in the Lagos Plan of Action (April 1980) that laid down the modalities of a future African Economic Community, which was supposed to be created by the year 2000. However, the failures of the OAU in terms of conflict resolution and its impotence in the face of the widespread violation of basic civil and political liberties, the corollary failure of the regional economic communities to deepen economic integration and ultimately the socio-economic crises that Africa encountered during the 1980s, led to the realisation that the earlier approaches to develop cooperation and integration had failed. This led to the next stage, which saw the Treaty 1991 establishment of the African Economic Community, and ultimately the Constitutive Act of the AU.

The formation of the AU has to be placed in the context of the history and perceptions surrounding the OAU. In retrospect, the conventional evaluation of the OAU is that it has more or less “failed” in terms of its objectives and principles. The few successes attributed to the OAU revolve around its efforts in the struggles to destroy the last vestiges of European and settler colonialism on the continent. The OAU is also credited with providing a regular forum for the leaders of African states and with availing the opportunity to formulate common positions on issues of shared concern.

It is, therefore, to be expected that the AU as an institution is, at least in the formal sense, a departure from the OAU. At the most simplistic level, the AU is supposed to be the “antithesis” of the OAU. The AU is also envisaged as a vehicle for achieving the economic and political integration of the continent, an objective that the OAU only harboured as a long-term objective and in the most abstract terms. Based on these anticipations and hopes, it is therefore to be expected that the AU diverges from the OAU in several respects. The most superficial distinction would be at the level of the principles and objectives of the AU and OAU enshrined in the Constitutive Act of the AU and the Charter of the OAU. The Constitutive Act of the AU, in terms of objectives and principles, is broader in its focus. At the same time, it is more specific in its terms than the Charter of the OAU. This is reflected in the focus of the Constitutive Act on the promotion of the guarantee and respect of basic human rights and the principles of liberal democratic governance (Article 3, Sub-Article 1 (e) & (f)). The Charter of the OAU is much more narrower. Furthermore, the Constitutive Act of the AU marks a radical departure from the OAU Charter in some respects. The AU includes several institutions and structures that were not part of the OAU organisational structure as set down in its Charter. The most obvious are the Economic and Social Council (Article 15), the Pan-African Parliament (Article 16) and the African Court of Justice (Article 17).

The above changes could be attributed to the widespread sense of urgency on the part of the political classes on the continent and the realisation of the extent of Africa’s economic crisis and marginalisation in the present global economy and the conviction or perception that Africa is lagging far behind the rest of the World in terms of economic integration. This in turn has led to a situation where we witness today an unreserved acceptance of the AU and arguably an exaggerated sense of its potential.

The first Extraordinary Assembly of Heads of State and Government held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, from 3rd to 5th February 2003, has led to the usual exaggerated expectations and statements. However, the flood of optimism began soon after the conversion of the OAU into the AU, a process that was almost universally viewed as leading to a new stage in the process of African unity and integration.

In his opening address to the Heads of State and Governments in Addis Ababa, the current Chairperson of the AU, President Thambo Mbeki of the Republic of South Africa, made it known that none of the member states had as yet ratified the protocol to establish the Peace and Security Council, i.e., the conflict resolution and management organ of the AU. On a more substantive level, he also underlined the fact that not enough member states had ratified the protocol that would allow for the establishment of the Pan-African Parliament.

On the international level, Mbeki called attention to the failure of the African governments to unite behind a single African candidate for the post of the Director General of the World Health Organisation (WHO). One can see the above phenomena as episodic and, therefore, not crucial. On the other hand, they can be interpreted as symptomatic of the nature and history of Pan-Africanism and African integration. The Constitutive Act of the AU and the inaugural summit of the AU held in Durban, South Africa, seemed to be an indication of a new level in the process of African unity. On the other hand, it is questionable whether this is a realistic expectation.

There are several obstacles that could be predicted in this process, such as the current level and incidence of inter-state and intra-state conflict, the differing interests of governments in the AU, the purported modalities of the relationship of the AU with the various existing regional economic communities in the continent, to name just a few. On a more significant level another set of issues has to do with the obstacles and challenges that have so far blocked past attempts aimed at forging regional and continental integration. At the risk of oversimplification and methodological confusion, the above could be subdivided into the political and the economic.

The Processes of Integration and Cooperation in Africa during the Cold War Period

Historically, the political challenges to African integration had manifested themselves in different forms. African states, in the decades after independence, had paid lip service to the ideals of Pan-Africanism and were signatories to several agreements and treaties relating to continental and regional-level integration. Paradoxically, they had almost always shied away from implementation. There had been very little political will and commitment on the part of African governments to the agreements and programs of integration. As far as integration in the African context is concerned, therefore, the distinction between form and content and between rhetoric and action should be emphasised. Another related phenomenon is the fact that attempts at integration, whether at the regional or the continental levels, lacked “popular content”. In other words, the programs and negotiations regarding African integration had always been the monopoly of governments and did not ensure any mass input or “participation”. This has been often cited by many observers as one of the main weaknesses of past attempts at integration in Africa. Historically, this tendency was further reinforced by the increased authoritarian turn in African politics in the years after independence.

Ultimately, the “idolisation” of the notion of territorial sovereignty (a principle enshrined in the OAU Charter) on the part of the governments of the newly independent African states, meant that integration and its attendant diminution of sovereignty stood very little chance of success. On the economic front, several processes and features of the structure of African economies and their positioning in the international economic system became fundamental obstacles to African cooperation and unity, at both the regional and continental levels. At the primary level, for instance, the newly independent states preserved their close economic and political linkages to their “former” colonial masters (especially true in the case of Francophone countries). This gave rise to a situation where intra-African economic linkages had negligible value. This in effect meant that the objective economic basis for regional and continental economic cooperation was questionable.

The “uneven development” of African economies and the ubiquitous phenomena of unequal benefits in most regional economic communities created a scenario where member states were discouraged from further deepening the processes of economic integration. There was a prevalent perception, and rightly so, that there was very little benefit to be derived from advanced economic integration. Consequently, most regional economic communities have remained stalled at the level of a formal Preferential Trade Area (PTA), the lowest level of economic integration. Paradoxically, the furthest level of economic integration in the African context is the CEAO, the member states of which all preserve the closest links to the former colonial country, France. However, this has been achieved at the expense of the obligations members’ to the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), of which all of the member states of the CEAO also belong.

A related factor worth mentioning in this regard is the fact that most African economies are “competitive” rather than “complementary”. This emanates from the structure of their economies as producers of primary commodities, a situation rooted in the colonial era. One important consequence of this state of affairs was that African economies had very little to exchange among themselves by way of trade.

By the mid 1980s, the failure of the functionalist approach and the regional economic communities became a matter of widespread agreement on the continent. For instance, at a forum organised by the OAU, participants mentioned the following as factors explaining the general failure of regional integration in the African context:

• Divergent inter-regional policies;

• Proliferation of institutions with the same objectives, and the non-participation of populations in decision-making and hence the populations’ lack of real interest in what goes on in these regional and sub-regional institutions;

• Lack of financial support of members states to the institutions they themselves established;

• Structural inadequacies of the said institutions, including secretariats without decision-making powers and financial as well as human resources;

• Incapacity of member states to implement the decisions they jointly adopted (OAU 1985, 13-14).

The above processes and factors have in the past militated against any meaningful progress in terms of the advancement of programs and processes of integration and cooperation, whether at the continental or regional level. The weaknesses affecting the regional economic communities became all the more glaring in that in the period after the formation of the OAU they were seen as the building blocks of continental unity and cooperation. The paramount question today, therefore, would be whether these structural factors and processes have been effectively superseded or transcended.

The Present Context and the Prospects for Integration

There is no denying the fact that integration or unity at multiple levels is a matter of definite urgency. This is evident from the African context of today, which can be simply characterised as a situation of multifaceted crisis and stagnation. On the other hand, only the most optimistic would contend that the factors and structures that have historically been the obstacles to African integration have been transcended.

On the political level, the processes of democratisation and liberalisation have been viewed as major political ruptures which have ushered in the demise of authoritarianism. This would lead to the conclusion that in the aftermath of the above-mentioned political changes, processes of integration would come under popular control and supervision. But the earlier statement, for very good reasons, is not definitive because the processes of democratisation and liberalisation and their probable consequences are far from conclusive (Bratton Van de Walle 1997, 278).

The above tendency is reflected in the increasing emphasis of “popular participation” in processes of integration through the vehicle of civil society organisations. Needless to say, some regional economic communities have advanced further along this path than others. The governments involved in the AU also seem to have woken up to the necessity of ensuring the input of civil society.

The intention to ensure a role for and even the necessity of the involvement of civil society organisations is undoubtedly an advance on past practice as far as integration and unity in Africa are concerned. However, it remains questionable whether civil society organisations, as they are right now constituted, remain the best vehicles to ensure mass participation in the integration processes in the African context. Furthermore, the anticipated involvement and participation by civil society organisations has not taken the form of institutionalised input, say in decision-making, but more along the lines of nominal consultation and advisory functions.

As mentioned earlier, the AU includes as one of its organs the Pan-African Parliament, which is envisaged as a body that would allow peoples’ participation in decision-making in the AU (Constitutive Act, Article 16). The creation of the Pan-African Parliament was part of the treaty establishing the African economic community (Treaty Establishing the African Economic Community, Article 14, 1 & 2). However, the debate around and the trajectory of the evolution of the Pan-African Parliament are highly instructive.

With regard to the issues of the mode of election and the powers of the Pan-African Parliament, a division emerged between those (very few) who called for direct elections to the parliament based on universal adult suffrage and the others (the overwhelming majority) who believed national legislatures should select representatives to the African parliament7. The division perfectly reflected the differences between those who supported a wide range of powers for the proposed body and those who visualised its role more in terms of a consultative body (ibid.).

At the level of political will and commitment, therefore, it remains to be seen whether African governments are ready to consider, let alone allow, the peoples of their countries to play a meaningful role in and impact on regional and continental integration. It also remains questionable whether governments in Africa are willing to sacrifice an iota of their sovereignty to regional and continental institutions and regimes. Economically, the prospects for integration are much more perplexing. The structure of the economies in question has not witnessed any substantial transformation. Today, African economies are still competitive and not complementary in terms of their production structure. The bulk of the economic and commercial linkages of African states are not with each other, but with the developed capitalist states. In most of the existing regional economic communities, the value of trade and other economic linkages between member states is still negligible.

However, at the present historical conjuncture, which is witnessing the increased and complex integration of global capitalism, Africa as a continent has become increasingly marginalised. Africa’s share in world trade and investment flows has diminished and is continuing to diminish. In this context, therefore, integration and the presentation of a common front in the confrontations with the developed Capitalist West becomes a vital necessity to transcend this state of affairs. This has had the effect of lending urgency to attempts at intensifying regional and continental integration and developing new modalities of interaction with the developed world, of which both the AU and the NEPAD are prime examples. The NEPAD is an attempt to change the terms of the relationship between Africa and the developed world. To be more precise, it is a plea for more aid and foreign investment in return for which African regimes promise to be in their “best behaviour” in terms of their guarantee of human rights and democratic governance and the creation of optimum conditions for the operations of capital in Africa. NEPAD has come in for the expected criticism. Its authors are criticised for “accepting the status-quo” and for failing to involve the African peoples in its formulation. Those leaning on the left highlight its adherence to neo-liberal orthodoxy as a major drawback.8 The Peace, Security and Political Governance as well as the Economic and Corporate Governance Initiatives authenticate this assertion.

The precise interface between the AU and NEPAD is not very clear. The NEPAD initiative highlights the importance of the development and intensification of trade and other economic linkages within Africa (Keet 2002, 24-26). It underlines the necessity of integration based on a functional approach and the importance of the regional economic groupings in this regard (NEPAD document, October 2001, 19). However, the NEPAD initiative, according to some of its detractors, perceives the regional and continental integration largely in terms of the advantages to foreign capital by leading to the emergence of larger markets and general international competitiveness (Ibid, Keet). The NEPAD initiative also includes proposals for a peer review mechanism (i.e., The African Peer Review Mechanism or APRM), in terms of evaluating the performance of African regimes in the dimensions of “Democracy and Political Governance”, and “Economic and Corporate Governance”. This in turn is also reflected in the AU, which seems ready now to censure and apply sanctions against regimes which transgress the principles and practice of liberal democratic governance (Constitutive Act of the AU, Article 4, Sub-Articles (f) & (h) and Article 30). It appears that there is some degree of overlap in this area but the initiators of NEPAD envisage a role for the organs of the AU in the peer review process even though the precise modalities of the relationship have yet to be worked out.

Once again, therefore, it seems that the old problems of multiplication of initiatives and the duplication of tasks are making a reappearance. An evaluation of NEPAD, however, is still a long way off and depends on the response of the developed world towards it.

Conclusion

To evaluate the AU and prospects for African unity, one concept that becomes extremely useful would be the concept of substitutism9. Substitutism in this particular instance denotes a tendency present in the history of Pan-Africanism and African integration. It could be defined as an attempt to stand in for, or replace, or substitute absent real historical preconditions and level of development that would be necessary prerequisites for integration and unity in the African context.

Substitutism has been apparent from the very beginning of the Pan-Africanist movement where Africans from the Diaspora took the leading role and did not relinquish their pivotal role until 1945 and the 5th Pan-African Congress held in Manchester. Later, the political classes and the post-independence leadership of the new African states assumed the mantle and the historical responsibility of ensuring continental and regional integration. As the history of the African inter-state relations in the period before the formation of the OAU reveals, these governments also took up antagonistic positions on the modalities of African unity and integration. In retrospect, this has led to the situation today where the political classes and the governments are assigned the onus for the failures and defeats because of the impracticality of African integration and unity. One could argue that this is a mistake in that the governments and political classes only took the initiative because the socio-historical pre-conditions fundamental to integration and unity were and are absent in the African context.

Some of the socio-historical conditions and factors have been discussed earlier or mentioned in passing, but the historical process of European integration would be a very good example. The European Union can be seen as the consummation of a long historical process and viable socio-historical condition. The EU today is the result (not conscious) of a process that began with the Roman Empire, the spread of Christianity, the Holy Roman Empire, and the Renaissance. These historical processes, one could argue, had as a consequence the creation of some level of commonality in terms of culture and world-view whose importance cannot be underestimated. In general terms, one can make the assumption that the above processes led to the creation of a common and mutually intelligible social world. The French Revolution and the historical processes it set in motion were pan-European in scope. The struggles against the monarchy, the Church and aristocracy on the part of the Subaltern classes were European struggles. The struggles of the working classes organised by the 1st, the 2nd (until 1914) and the 3rd International were European struggles against a common social system and social enemy. The end of the Second World War, the economic devastation it left in its wake and the Cold War division of Europe created conducive conditions for cooperation and incremental integration. So the conclusion here would be that European integration was not initiated and is not occurring in a vacuum.

The underlying point here is that the present-day African states and peoples do not share a common heritage in terms of culture, socio-political struggles, and history. This would be a decisive weakness bearing in mind the already formidable obstacles to African integration in terms of the socio-economic structures inherited from the colonial era, and Africa’s position in the present global capitalist economy. The AU as a higher stage or level, relative to the OAU, on the path to African integration is, to put it very mildly, just an aspiration. On more levels than one, the AU represents continuity. It symbolises the continuing desires of the African governments and political classes for African integration.

Another element of continuity is the resurrection of substitutism today in the form of governments (in a more limited capacity) and (unrepresentative) civil society organisations working for integration and attempting to accelerate processes of unity in a “vacuum”. Yet an additional element of continuity from the past is the role assigned to regional economic communities in spite of their manifest historical failure in Africa and the continuing unwillingness to “arm” common institutions such as the Pan-African Parliament with the requisite representativeness, legislative powers and executive powers. The multiple obligations and confusing institutions and duplication of functions and tasks of the stagnating regional economic communities, the AU and the NEPAD initiative are all elements of continuity. On a more substantive level, the obstacles and difficulties facing the AU cannot be underestimated. The AU is loosely based on the EU. But as mentioned earlier the history of the formation of the EU and the concrete socio-historical conditions were and are radically different from those of Africa.

The different institutions and organs of the AU as mentioned earlier reflect a departure from the historical experience of the OAU (Compare Article 5, Sub-Article 1 of the Constitutive Act of the AU to Article 7 of the OAU Charter). But bigger questions such as the resource requirements of the AU and the sourcing of these resources could arise. Another question revolves around the precise powers and legal framework undergirding the organs of the AU. As discussed earlier, the tendency to whittle away the powers and responsibilities of these organs would naturally undermine their potential. But this is a very real possibility bearing in mind the tendency of African governments to shy away (historically) from arrangements that imply a diminution of their sovereignty.

To sum up, the historical context informing the emergence of the AU has created expectations and requirements that the AU would be hard put to meet. One area that the OAU is accused of is a historical failure in the sphere of conflict resolution and management. Inter-state and intra-state conflicts, in the African context, demonstrate a tendency of changing patterns and even geographical distribution. But the underlying reality is the fact that the socio-economic crisis afflicting Africa has rendered already weak states more vulnerable and fragile. One manifestation of this weakness or fragility of the African state has been the phenomenon of state collapse. The AU, therefore, could be faced with an uphill task in terms of conflict resolution and management. Needless to say, the long-term structural causes of conflict are paramount in terms of reducing the incidence and intensity of conflict. This is, of course, outside the AU mandate unless viewed in the most expansive sense.

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