A. Introduction

The concept of African unity or unity of the people of Africa has had a long history. It originated from and served as the bed-rock of the Pan-African movement in the late 19th and 20th centuries. Pan-Africanism, as a philosophy, was derived from the belief that African people share common cultural and racial bonds, as well as objectives. Therefore, there was the need to unite to achieve these objectives. The original purpose of Pan-Africanism was racial/cultural. The formal concept was initially developed outside of Africa to fight the vestiges of slavery, colonialism, discrimination and secure independence for colonized people of Africa. In the mid-20th century, it became the rallying cry by African nationalist leaders for independence from colonial rule

Colonial rule was never accepted by Africans. In many parts of Africa resistance was ferocious. In North Africa the Arabs of Mauritania revolted in 1905 and killed the French governor Coppolani. In 1896 the Ethiopians routed the Italians at Adowa with furious vindictiveness. In West Africa historians have documented the resistance of the Sarakolle kingdom of Mamadou Lamine from 1885 to 1887, the jihad of Ma Ba Tall from 1861 to 1867 in Senegambia, revolts by the Abe people of eastern Ivory Coast from 1891 to 1918, the Asante of Ghana in 1891, and many other states. Colonial rule was not accepted on the East African coast either. The MajiMaji revolt in 1890 was a mass movement that encompassed many ethnic groups  the Shambaa, Zaramo, Zigula, Yao, Ngoni, Ngulu, Kwere, Hehe, Kami, Sagara, Makonde, Mbugu, Arab, and Swahili. In addition, a relatively large number of powerful and wealthy merchants vigorously opposed the colonial powers. Among them were Mirambo (from 1871 to 1884) on the great ivory route of Tabora (Tanzania), Msiri in Katanga (from 1860 to 1891), and, until he allied with the Belgians in the Upper Congo, Tippu Tib in Maniema. In southern Africa, the Sotho and the Zulu (under Shaka) rebelled against colonial domination in the 1880s, and the Shona and the Ndebele did so during the following decade.

Elsewhere in Africa there were sporadic revolts. But African resistance to colonial rule was in general weak because of the vast military superiority of European weapons.  In all, the early colonial years brought political subjugation and humiliation to Africans. Scores of African rulers died on the battlefield; many more were executed or exiled after defeat. Those who signed treaties and remained as protected rulers soon found themselves demoted from king to chief and required to collect taxes or recruit laborers for their French or German overlords. At a later stage, most were dismissed altogether (Manning, 1988; p. 57).

Outside Africa, resistance to slavery was mounting, which together with that against colonialism culminated in the formation of the Pan-Africanist movement at the dawn of the 20th century. In 1900 Henry Sylvester Williams, a lawyer from the Caribbean island of Trinidad, organized a Pan-African conference in London to give black people the opportunity to discuss issues facing blacks around the world. The conference was attended by a small but significant representation of Africans and people of African descent from the Caribbean and the United States, as well as whites from Britain.

The original political objective of the meeting was to protest the unequal treatment of blacks in the British colonies as well as in Britain. However, the need to uphold the dignity of African peoples worldwide and to provide them with education and other social services assumed critical importance. In addition, speakers at the conference celebrated aspects of traditional African culture and the great historical achievements of African peoples. Among them was the influential Pan-African pioneer Edward Wilmot Blyden, a Caribbean-born Liberian educator, who wrote extensively in the late 19th century about the positive accomplishments of Africans and may have coined the term Pan-Africanism.

Subsequent Pan-African meetings were organized by distinguished African American scholar. W.E.B. Du Bois, cofounder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The aftermath of World War I (1914-1918) raised serious concerns among blacks in the United States, regarding the well-being of African American and African soldiers who had served in the war and the status of former German colonial territories in Africa that had been captured during the war by Britain, France, and other Allied powers. Du Bois convened the first Pan-African Congress in Paris in 1919. The congress was held at the same time as the Paris Peace Conference, at which European powers negotiated the end of the war.

The agenda of the first Pan-African Congress resembled that of the 1900 conference in its concern for the plight of Africans and people of African descent. Significant emphasis was placed on the provision of education for Africans and the need for greater African participation in the affairs of the colonies.  This may be regarded as a precursor to the natives’ right to self determination.  Delegates issued a series of resolutions. One of them was the following:

The natives of Africa must have the right to participate in the Government as fast as their development permits, in conformity with the principle that the Government exists for the natives, and not the natives for the Government. They shall at once be allowed to participate in local and tribal government, according to ancient usage, and this participation shall gradually extend, as education and experience proceed, to the higher offices of states; to the end that, in time, Africa is ruled by consent of the Africans . . . Whenever it is proven that African natives are not receiving just treatment at the hands of any state or that any State deliberately excludes its civilized citizens or subjects of Negro descent from its body politic and culture, it shall be the duty of the League of Nations to bring the matter to the notice of the civilized world (cited in Langley, 1979; p. 740).

The next Pan-African congresses sponsored by Du Bois were held in 1921 (in London, Paris, and Brussels, Belgium), 1923 (in London and Lisbon, Portugal), and 1927 (in New York City). These congresses were attended by increasing numbers of representatives from the United States, Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean. Several important factors affected the growing popularity of the congresses. First, many delegates were sponsored by international labor movements, which were growing in size and power in the 1920s. A second factor was the growth of the black nationalist movement of Marcus Garvey. The Garvey movement was important in the United States as a popular expression of the sentiments of African unity and redemption among working-class blacks. His followers contrasted with the more elite black groups cultivated by Du Bois. Garvey, a Jamaican, founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in 1914 to promote black pride, political and economic improvements for blacks everywhere, and the repatriation of blacks to Africa (often called the “Back to Africa” movement).

The Pan-Africanist philosophy, however, subsequently evolved into two forms. A new form, known as Continental Pan-Africanism, emerged to advocate the unity of states and peoples within Africa, either through political union or through international cooperation. This was championed by African nationalist leaders such as Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana during the struggle against colonialism. The other broader form, known as Diaspora Pan-Africanism, retained the original ethos of Pan-Africanism as it related to the solidarity among all black Africans and peoples of black African descent outside the African continent.

On the African continent, new developments were unfolding. In 1945 pan-Africanists such as Kwame Nkrumah, George Padmore, and Julius Nyerere were demanding and pledging equal justice, freedom of the press, freedom of expression, and parliamentary democracy for every part of the continent. The declarations of the PanAfrican Congress in Manchester in 1945 were particularly telling: "We are determined to be free. We want education. We want the right to earn a decent living; the right to express our thoughts and emotions, to adopt and create forms of beauty. We will fight in every way we can for freedom, democracy, and social betterment" (cited by Langley, 1979; p.121).

From 1945 to 1947 Nkrumah served as the general-secretary of the Pan African Congress and published a monthly paper called the New African. The first issue (March 1946) preached African unity and nationalism and attacked imperialism and the unjust laws of the colonies. A prolific writer, Nkrumah authored many books to propagate his ideas and to condemn colonialism. Among his works were: Towards Colonial Freedom (1940); Education and Nationalism in West Africa (1943); What I Mean by Positive Action (1950);  Ghana: An Autobiography (1957), Africa Must Unite  (1963).

In 1957 Ghana became the first sub-Saharan African state to gain independence, and Nkrumah became its first prime minister. Nkrumah held the Pan-Africanist view that the independence of Ghana would be incomplete without the independence of all of Africa. To work toward this goal, he appointed George Padmore to establish a Pan-African Secretariat within the Ghanaian government. The secretariat pursued the twin goals of total African independence and continental political union in two series of international conferences, held between 1958 and 1961: First, the All-African Peoples’ Conferences were held to stimulate independence movements in other African colonies. Second, Nkrumah organized the Conferences of Independent African States to establish a diplomatic framework for the political union of Africa. By inviting representatives from independent North African states to the conferences and by holding the 1961 All-African Peoples’ Conference in Cairo, Egypt, Nkrumah’s intent was clearly to unite the entire African continent.

In 1960 Nkrumah invited W. E. B. Du Bois to live in Ghana to act as an adviser and to initiate a project that Du Bois had proposed, the Encyclopedia Africana, a comprehensive encyclopedia of the culture and history of African peoples. Du Bois died in Ghana in 1963 with this project incomplete. However, the publication of several books during this period made Continental Pan-African philosophy more widely known. Notable among these books were Padmore’s Pan-Africanism or Communism? (1956) and Nkrumah’s Africa Must Unite (1963).

In 1960, 17 African countries gained independence. By the end of 1963, approximately 80 percent of the African continent was independent. Nkrumah’s goal of establishing a United States of Africa with a centralized power structure was opposed by the leaders of many of the new African countries, who resisted giving up their nations’ newfound autonomy. They were known as the “Casablanca Group.”Nonetheless, in May 1963 representatives from 32 African nations of both North and sub-Saharan Africa met in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and founded the  Organization of African Unity (OAU, now African Union) as a loose federation of independent African states committed to continent-wide cooperation.

B. The Organization of African Unity

The OAU started off with a stumble. Right from the beginning, it was hobbled by a number of challenges.  First, the independence movement in 1963 was still an “unfinished business.” The Portuguese colonies were still not free; they gained their independence in 1975. Zimbabwe was still under the colonial yoke until 1980 and apartheid had not been dismantled until 1994.  Furthermore, there were still political differences among the newly-independent African nations regarding the pace of unification.  Moreover, the general lack of resources made it difficult to turn political union into a reality. These factors forced the OAU to shelve political unification although Nkrumah constantly spoke of it, and to narrow its focus to the liberation of the remaining colonies in Africa.

More significantly, the concept of African unity suffered a serious set-back – or a near-fatal blow – in 1966 when Nkrumah was overthrown in a military coup in Ghana while on a visit to Hanoi. It left an enormous leadership vacuum that remained unfilled for decades. Even more distressing was the scarcity of credible leaders to take up the Pan-Africanist mantle. The closest replacements could have been Julius Nyerere of Tanzania and Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia. However, both lacked Nkrumah’s charisma and fiery interlocution.  Besides, both Nyerere and Kaunda were pre-occupied with aiding the struggle against apartheid in South Africa.

Leaderless, the OAU drifted but continental Pan-Africanism nevertheless continued to remain a dream and a strategy for addressing Africa’s economic problems. This was significant because it underscored a more potent rationale for unification – economic integration.  Far too many African countries are economically non-viable. Development projects in the 1960s were being duplicated to the point of absurdity. In the race to industrialize Africa, each country was setting up industries with little coordination or reference to each other. For example, it made little economic sense for Ivory Coast, Ghana, Togo and Benin to each have a cement factory or an airline to serve small local markets. Artificial colonial borders and different currencies were also impeding trade among African nations. Intra-African trade has decades been stuck at 10 percent of the total. As a result, in the 1980s, deliberate policies were undertaken to promote regional integration.  Regional cooperative organizations were established and among them were the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), The East Africa Economic Community (EAAC) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC, formerly the Southern African Development Coordination Council), which are trade blocs that have played significant roles in regional economic integration. With the increasing pressure of economic competition from international trade blocs in North America, Europe, and Asia, the achievement of economic and political unity on the African continent became an urgent imperative.

However, between 1966 and 2001 when it was disbanded, the OAU – the body charged with the political unification of Africa -- achieved very little. During this period, the OAU, plagued with budgetary difficulties and internal wrangling over focus, lost its way. Its focus shifted away from the African people and its annual summits became a platform for African leaders to grandstand and make grandiloquent speeches.  The organization failed to protect the African people from the tyrannical excesses of their leaders. In the process, the OAU rapidly lost both relevance and credibility. The liberation of the former Portuguese colonies in 1975, Zimbabwe in 1980 and South Africa in 1994 did not stem the OAU’s slide into ridicule and obscurity. Its performance on conflict resolution, protection of human rights and promotion of democracy was, to say the least, embarrassing.

It may be recalled that at the PanAfrican Congress in Mwanza in 1958, the delegates bitterly complained that: "The democratic nature of the indigenous institutions of the peoples of West Africa has been crushed by obnoxious and oppressive laws and regulations, and replaced by autocratic systems of colonial government which are inimical to the wishes of the people of West Africa." It demanded that: "The principle of the Four Freedoms (Freedom of speech, press, association and assembly) and the Atlantic Charter be put into practice at once...Democracy must prevail throughout Africa from Senegal to Zanzibar and from Cape to Cairo."

The Congress stoically resolved to "work for the establishment and perpetuation of true parliamentary democracy in every territory within the African continent." It vowed an "uncompromising safeguarding of liberty of every citizen irrespective of his race, color, religion or national origin. The Conference declared publicly that it was "dedicated to the precepts and practices of democracy." It made it plain that "The safeguards and protection of citizen's rights and human liberties will be buttressed by:
Uncompromising adherence to the Rule of Law;
Maintenance of the absolute independence of the Judiciary;
The exercise of the right to vote or stand for any office; and 
The constant observance of the declaration of the Universal Human Rights and the United Charter.

Further, the Congress called "upon the Government of East and Central Africa to remove all legal restrictions against the freedom of the press and particularly condemns the unjust prosecution and convictions which have taken place in some of these Territories against the African press in particula"(cited in Langley, 1979; p. 780).

The delegates also adopted a Freedom Charter that called upon "the Government of East and Central Africa to remove legal restrictions against the freedom of the press and particularly condemn[ed] the unjust prosecutions and convictions which [had] taken place in some of these Territories against the African Press in particular" (cited in Langley, 1979; p. 780).

After independence, however, the same delegates seldom established those lofty principles and ideals in their own respective countries (Ayittey, 1992; pp. 145-176). Instead, they established de facto apartheid regimes, under which political power was monopolized by a head of state and his ethnic group. In 1990, only 4 out of the 54 African countries were democratic: Botswana, Gambia, Mauritius and Senegal. By 2008, this number had increased to 16, meaning the vast majority of the African people still lived under repressive, undemocratic systems.

Recall also that the original purpose of Pan-Africanism was to end political subjugation and humiliation of Africans. But painful irony is that independence did not bring an end to political subjugation and oppression. Independence was in name only. One set of masters (white colonialists) was traded for another set (black neo-colonialists) and the oppression and exploitation of the African people continued unabated. Tragically, the OAU never saw this irony or perfidy. It had no active program to promote democracy or freedom in Africa. It defined “freedom” only in racialist terms – that is, black Africans were free as long as they were not ruled by white colonialists.

From the l960s, a brutal campaign of terror was unleashed against the African people by their own leaders. Africans' native freedoms and rights were steadily squashed as brutalities were heaped upon them. They often had no political rights and channels through which to seek redress of their grievances. The police and the army, which were supposed to protect them, instead perpetrated heinous atrocities against them. Uganda offers a classic example where more than 800,000 people perished at the hands of Idi Amin, Milton Obote, and Tito Okello -- all former Ugandan heads of state. When Idi Amin was killing Ugandans at the rate of l50 a day, the OAU did nothing. One Ugandan Anglican bishop, Festo Kivengere, was quite irate:

“The OAU's silence has encouraged and indirectly contributed to the bloodshed in Africa. I mean, the OAU even went so far as to go to Kampala for its summit (in l975) and make Amin its chairman. And at the very moment the heads of state were meeting in the conference hall, talking about the lack of human rights in southern Africa, three blocks away, in Amin torture chambers, my countrymen's heads were being smashed with sledge hammers and their legs being chopped off with axes (Lamb, 1984; p. 106).

Amin's reign of terror and slaughter is well known. Less well known but equally infamous was the regime of President Francisco Marcias Nguema of Equatorial Guinea. In 1972, just four years after his country won its independence from Spain, Nguema declared himself president-for-life. Backed by Cuba, he pursued a policy of systematic extermination of anyone who stood in the way of his attaining absolute power. He expelled Nigerian cocoa farmers to destroy the country's main industry and sank the fishing fleet to prevent anyone from escaping. He declared himself the only god and the "Miracle and Strength" of Equatorial Guinea and demanded that his portrait be placed on every altar. When the Catholic Church refused, Nguema unleashed a campaign of annihilation against his people, who were predominantly (95 percent) Catholic. By the time he was overthrown by a 1979 coup, he had massacred an estimated 50,000 people or one-seventh of the country's population.  Was this Pan-Africanism?

By 1990, the OAU had become irrelevant. Afflicted with intellectual astigmatism, it could see with eagle-eyed clarity the brutal injustices and atrocities heaped upon blacks by white colonialists and slavers but was hopelessly blind to the equally heinous injustices meted out by African leaders to their own black people.  To the millions of Africans suffering under the repressive yoke of such tyrants as Field Marshal Idi Amin, Francisco Marcias Nguema, General Mobutu Sese Seko, General Samuel Doe, General Sani Abacha and others, the OAU was irrelevant. It was dismissed as a den of unrepentant despots, more noted for its glitzy annual jamborees, where rabid autocrats click champagne glasses to celebrate their longevity in office.

Even the late Julius Nyerere, ex-president of Tanzania, became critical of the OAU. In a speech at the University of Edinburgh on October 9, 1997, he excoriated:

The Organization of African Unity was set up by African states in 1963. Its name was as much an expression of hope as it was of serious intention; it was based on the principles of anticolonialism, anti Apartheid, and noninterference in the internal affairs of member states. Being one of the hopeful, in a moment of extreme exasperation I later once described the OAU as a Trade Union of African Heads of State! We protected one another, whatever we did to our own peoples in our respective countries. To condemn a Mobutu, or Idi Amin or a Bokassa was taboo! It would be regarded as interference in the internal affairs of a fellow African State! (PanAfrican News, September 1998)


It was this “protection”, afforded by its “non-interference clause” that caused the OAU to be conspicuously silent over grotesque violations of human rights in the post-colonial period. But more prominent and eminent Africans started speaking out too. On a JOY FM radio interview in Accra in July 2000, Kofi Annan, the U.N.Secretary-General, lamented that sometimes he is "ashamed to be an African" because of the never-ending crises in Africa. At the OAU Summit in Lome, Togo, on July 10, 2000, he blasted African leaders for the mess on the continent. Ghana's state-owned newspaper, The Daily Graphic (July 12, 2000) reported:

"At the recent OAU Summit in Lome on July 10, United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan told African leaders that they are to blame for most of the continent's problems. 'Instead of being exploited for the benefit of the people, Africa's mineral resources have been so mismanaged and plundered that they are now the source of our misery'" (p. 5).

Former South African president Nelson Mandela weighed in, urging Africans to take up arms and overthrow corrupt leaders who have accumulated vast personal fortunes while children have gone hungry. He urged the public to pick up rifles to defeat the tyrants” (The Washington Post, May 7, 2000; p. A22). And no less a person than Nobel laureate, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, added his voice. In an interview with the Saturday Star newspaper in Johannesburg, he said: "Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe seems to have gone bonkers in a big way. It is very dangerous when you subvert the rule of law in your own country, when you don't even respect the judgments of your judges . . . then you are on the slippery slope of perdition. It is a great sadness what has happened to President Mugabe. He was one of Africa's best leaders, a bright spark, a debonair and well-read person" (Saturday Star, January 12, 2002).

President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa was also sharply critical of African leaders:

The time has come that we call a halt to the seemingly socially approved deification of the acquisition of material wealth and the abuse of state power to impoverish the people and deny our continent the possibility to achieve sustainable economic development. Africa cannot renew itself where its upper echelons are a mere parasite on the rest of society, enjoying a self-endowed mandate to use their political power and define the uses of such power such that its exercise ensures that our Continent reproduces itself as the periphery of the world economy, poor, underdeveloped and incapable of development (The Nigerian, October 1998; p.28).

President Mbeki called for an African Renaissance, which "demands that we purge ourselves of the parasites and maintain a permanent vigilance against the danger of entrenchment in African society of this rapacious stratum with its social morality according to which everything in society must be organized materially to benefit the few . . . The call for an African Renaissance is a call to rebellion. We must rebel against the tyrants and the dictators, those who seek to corrupt our societies and steal the wealth that belongs to the people. We must rebel against the ordinary criminals who murder, rape and rob, and conduct war against poverty, ignorance and the backwardness of the children of Africa" (The Nigerian, October 1998; p.29).

Continental Pan-Africanism suffered grievously under the auspices of the OAU. Africans could not rally behind tyrannical rulers; there were far too many which the OAU failed to bring to account. Moreover, it was incongruous advocate African unity at a time when many countries were torn by disunity, civil strife and war.  The mandate of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) included conflict resolution and on this the OAU scored abysmally.

More than 40 wars have been fought on the African continent since independence in the 1960s. The economic cost and the human toll have been devastating. Whole states have collapsed, infrastructure destroyed and millions of people uprooted to become refugees.  By 1994, Africa’s refugee count exceeded 10 million and the death toll from those senseless wars even greater. Here is some rough breakdown:

Over 1 million Nigerians perished in the Biafran War of 1967
Over 4 million from Sudan’s civil wars,
Over 5 million in Congo’s wars (1996-2003)
Over 1 million Tutsis were killed in the 1994 Rwandan genocide

These numbers do not include those killed in the civil wars in Angola, Mozambique, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast or Burundi. How does one promote continental Pan-Africanism under these circumstances?

The vast majority of these wars have been intra-state. Unfortunately, the OAU’s record on resolving conflict has been embarrassing. Each time a conflict erupted, the instinctive reason of the OAU was to look for a neo-colonial or imperialist conspiracy and appeal urgently for international relief aid. The OAU was nowhere to be found when Somalia blew up in 1993. During the 1994 Rwandan genocide in which over 1 million Tutsis were slaughtered, the OAU was absent. How did the OAU respond to the United Nations request for African troops for peacekeeping duty in Rwanda? According to The Washington Post (8 May 1994), "No African nation offered troops. The Organization of African Unity (OAU) chief, Salim Salim, wrote [U.N. Secretary-General] Bhoutros-Ghali that the OAU does not want to take charge of raising a force, and he passed the burden back to the United Nations" (p.A5).

When the war in eastern Zaire erupted in October 1996, the OAU was on vacation. Public outrage forced it to act. It issued a feeble call on the rebels "to lay down their arms." The call was ignored and fighting raged. Stung and intent on salvaging its reputation, the OAU tried again, convening two conferences in Nairobi. They failed – as did another peace conference the OAU held in Lome, Togo. It was President Nelson Mandela of South Africa, who stepped in to provide some saving grace to the OAU. He convened and presided over a series of meetings between President Sese Seko Mobutu and rebel leader Laurent Kabila. But Mobutu would not yield or share power and the country imploded.

The leadership issue, which the OAU had persistently failed to address, was becoming too important to ignore. Eventually former President Mandela got tired of the antics of the OAU. He skipped the 1998 OAU Summit in Burkina Faso and urged the younger generation of leaders to root out tyranny and put the continent on the information superhighway. "People are being slaughtered to protect tyranny," he said (News wires, 10 June 1998). At the following OAU Summit in Algiers (July 15, 1999), President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa shocked delegates by stating that African leaders who took power by force would be banned from future OAU summits. And, rather than waste time bemoaning the effects of colonialism and globalization, “African leaders should take steps to integrate the continent’s economies,” he told them. “Mere moral appeals from the have-nots to the haves are not likely to take us very far,” he said, encouraging his OAU colleagues “to gain a profound understanding of economics, so that we can intervene in an informed manner.” He expressed impatience with those leaders who simply complain that globalization is passing Africa by. He reminded them that little has been done to implement the 1991 Treaty of Abuja that established an African economic community (The Washington Times, July 15, 1999; p.A14).

Such straight talk must be applauded as it is urgently needed, not only for the OAU to salvage its credibility but also to push forward the idea of Pan-Africanism. Certainly, this concept cannot be promoted on a continent where the OAU is unable to protect the African people against horrid campaigns of terror, intimidation and slaughter perpetrated by their own leaders.

C. The African Union

At the beginning of the new Millennium, it became apparent that the OAU had become a irrelevant dinosaur. In March, 2001, African leaders gathered in Sirte (Tripoli), Libya to announce the Declaration of the African Union. "The Assembly of Heads of State and government proudly declares the African Union by a unanimous decision," OAU Secretary General Salim Ahmed Salim said (Pan African News Agency, March 3, 2001). The Declaration climaxed the work of 17 months from Sirte I, when the Union idea was unveiled in September 1999 to transform the dream of the region and its people.

The Libyan leader hailed the Sirte II Declaration, to be given greater vent at the OAU's July 2001, 37th Summit in Lusaka, Zambia, as the "beginning of a new balance of power," in a uni-polar world, where the U.S. holds sway. OAU chairman and Togolese President Gnassingbe Eyadema, one of the longest serving African autocrats, described Sirte II Declaration as "victory and an ambitious step towards the African Union."

In July 2001, President Frederick Chiluba welcomed African leaders to Lusaka to consummate the Union, which was to become operational 30 days after 36 or two-thirds of OAU members had ratified the Constitutive Act. Thirty-two countries ratified the Act at Sirte II, while 53 countries signed up, remaining Morocco, which has suspended its membership of the OAU over Western Sahara territorial dispute. Rushing the Union into force without the mandatory ratification would have amounted to an unconstitutional act, hence the compromise on the Sirte II Declaration. Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir told Pan-African News Agency, it was important to insist on rules in order to give confidence and legality to the institutions of the Union.

The new organization, the African Union, with a vision of transforming Africa into a closely integrated community, is to be modeled after the European Union (EU). The 17 components of the African Union will include a Pan-African parliament, a court of justice, a central bank and a body equating to the United Nations Security Council, which will seek to resolve conflicts on the continent. The second measure taken at Lusaka was the merging of the objectives of promoting Africa’s political and economic development into a single project, the Economic Recovery Plan for Africa. Again to induce recalcitrant African leaders to attend, the Libyan strongman paid off the unpaid OAU membership dues of 6 African countries amounting to almost $14 million and Khaddafy himself arrived with a delegation of 350.

Sadly, the new AU did not get off from a good start, already burdened with a $54.53 million debt, representing non-payment of dues by 45 of its 54 members. The OAU threatened to lock out from the July 2001 Lusaka Summit those member states which had not paid their dues. When Khaddafy settled their arrears, they overwhelmingly approved Khaddafy's African Union concept. The new AU headquarters will use the same OAU headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

More threatening to the establishment of the new AU were the theatrics, the politics of intrigue, machinations of sabotage, and the super-inflated ego of the mercurial Khaddafy. Libya wanted to host the Pan-African Parliament -- one of the 17 components of the AU -- when Libya has no parliament, no military institutions, no political parties, no unions, no non-governmental organizations and holds no elections. Colonel Khaddafy described this as a permanent revolution. "In the era of the masses, power is in the hands of people themselves and leaders disappear forever," he wrote in the Green Book, his published revelations on civil society. Libyans joke that after 31 years in power, their leader shows no signs of disappearing any time soon (The New York Times, Feb 14, 2001; p.A1). 

A key-note speech by the new AU Secretary-General, Amara Essy, to mark the New Year on Jan 3, 2002 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, did not inspire much confidence. The challenges facing the African continent are both many and complicated, he noted. "The year 2001 has been another difficult year for our continent with its litany of conflicts, tragedies, natural disasters and other hardships linked to poverty and pandemics, which persist on our continent. The spread of AIDS, which last year killed more than two million people in Africa, only added to their many difficulties. Violation of human rights unfortunately continues to prevail.” Then he "accused the international community of failing the continent; their refusal to alleviate Africa's huge debt burden continues to compromise its development" (IRIN, Jan 3, 2002).

On May 8, 2002, the transformation of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) into the African Union (AU) was postponed -- just two months before it was scheduled to happen. Senior officials overseeing the transformation said more time -- three to four years -- was needed to complete the process of setting up the 17 key components of the new body but no time frame within which this process would be completed was given.

Presidential intrigue, fueled by inflated egos, threatened to derail the new African Union. "A row over the extraordinary security precautions of Libyan leader Moammar Khaddafy caused cancellation of a visit to Abuja, Nigeria on Feb 14, 2001, straining relations between the self-styled architect of African unity and the continent's most populous nation. Col. Khaddafy, who often travels with a large team of heavily armed security agents, had been invited to give a speech on his favorite theme of African unity. But the trip was abruptly canceled and Col. Khaddafy stayed on in Khartoum, where he had been attending a conference." (The Washington Times, Feb 15, 2001; p.A12).

Credit however must be given to the new organization focusing on African economic development. Over the past two decades, all sorts of grandiose initiatives and mega-plans have been announced by African leaders at various summits to launch Africa into the golden age of prosperity. Nothing is subsequently heard of them after the summits. In the late 1980s, there was much excitement about the creation of the African Economic Community. Nothing came out of it. At the 35th OAU Summit in Algiers (July 15, 1999), President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa shocked the delegates by reminding them that little has been done to implement the 1991 Treaty of Abuja that established an African Economic Community (The Washington Times, July 15, 1999; p.A14).

There were other grand initiatives too: The Algerian, and South African initiative, the Millennium Partnership for the African Recovery (MAP) and the Omega Plan, spearheaded by President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal. They were finally integrated into a single plan called the Compact For African Recovery by the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA). Subsequently, COMPACT metastasized into NEPAD (New Partnership for Africa's Development). All these plans commit African leaders to democratic ideals, establishment of peace, law and order, respect for human rights and basic freedoms, and a better management of their economies, among other things. They also entreat the international community, especially Western nations, to work in partnership with African leaders to help them to realize their goal.

For example, NEPAD (New Partnership for Africa's Development) -- a synthesis of these plans and touted by Presidents Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria and Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal -- was presented at the G8 Summit in Genoa in 2001 for Western financial support. NEPAD sought $64 billion in Western investments in Africa. The official NEPAD document undertook "to respect the global standards of democracy, whose core components include political pluralism, allowing for the existence of several political parties and workers' unions, fair, open, free and democratic elections periodically organized to enable the populace to choose their leaders freely." It also included a "peer review mechanism" by which African leaders who misrule their countries would be subject to criticism by fellow African leaders according to commonly agreed standards. NEPAD was trumpeted as "Africa's own initiative," "Africa's Plan," "African crafted," and therefore "African owned."

However, there were serious problems with NEPAD. First, it turned out NEPAD was modeled after a foreign plan: The U.S. Marshall Aid Plan, which rebuilt Europe after World War II. How then could NEPAD be "African crafted" or how could Africa claim ownership over someone else's idea? Second, the $64 billion in investment NEPAD sought from the West reflected the same old aid dependency syndrome. Third, NEPAD was "crafted" without consultation with Africa's NGOs and civic groups. Yet at the July 2001 Summit in Lusaka, Zambia, the OAU adopted NEPAD as an "economic program" for Africa" to operate as an integral part of the OAU and AU structures and not out of them. But in December 2001, the NEPAD 15-Member Implementation Committee established the NEPAD Secretariat in South Africa -- not in Addis Ababa, perhaps out of deference to President Thabo Mbeki, a principal originator of NEPAD -- to assist the OAU to transform itself into the AU. NEPAD now has its own structures, procedures, mechanisms and central organs separate from the OAU or AU.
 
In 2001, the West responded positively to NEPAD. Both the U.S. and Europe committed themselves to expanded development assistance and Africa was placed on top of the agenda for the 2002 G8 Summit. But as an editorial in The Washington Post (May 6, 2002) pointed out:

"If Africa's new partnership means anything, it is that the continent's leaders must tell Mr. Mugabe to stop terrorizing his country and call fresh elections. But Africa's leaders have equivocated. Mr. Obasanjo and Mr. Mbeki played their part in expelling Zimbabwe from the Commonwealth, much to their credit. But they have not used their partnership as a tool to squeeze him, and Nigeria recently blocked a European attempt to force a vote of censure at the U.N. Human Rights Commission. "There is an urgent need to set up parameters for good governance," Mr. Obasanjo declared at the recent partnership summit. If Mr. Mugabe does not fall outside those parameters, who will take them seriously? (p.A20).

The problem was that the architects of NEPAD did not even take themselves seriously. Instead of working collectively to advance NEPAD as an "African initiative," South Africa spearheaded NEPAD with Nigeria, Algeria and Senegal, in a group known as “the powerful G4” (group of four), leaving the other countries chafing with little role to play.

On June 5, 2002, African leaders met in Durban, South Africa to fine-tune the details of the ambitious recovery plan for Africa. But bitter acrimony engulfed the endeavor and tension emerged over membership of the powerful group of four core countries (South Africa with Nigeria, Algeria and Senegal) steering NEPAD. Irate at being excluded in the core group on allegations of corruption in his government, Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi left in a huff, barely 24 hours after the opening of the summit without making any formal addresses. His team of government officials subsequently withdrew from panel discussions on NEPAD and headed home. Kenya also complained that South Africa was rushing ahead with NEPAD without explaining the program to the rest of Africa. Libya, whose leader Col. Gaddaffi has been one of the architects of the AU, was also incensed for being left out of the plan.

“Libya has let it be known that it is not happy at being excluded when it was a major force behind the creation of the AU,” an African ambassador said, adding that explanations by some ministers that Libya was still largely isolated internationally had gone down badly with Khaddafy. Zambian Foreign Minister Katele Kalumba admitted there were tensions as NEPAD got off the ground (The Sunday Standard On Line, June 9, 2002).

Hope for the African Union was rapidly fading. Professor Adebayo Adedeji, the Nigerian member of the Eminent Persons Panel overseeing the establishment of the AU, hoped that new AU would not be old wine in new bottle with the "O" removed from the OAU (New African, June 2002; p.22). His hope did not pan out.

By 2010, not only NEPAD but the concept of the United States of Africa was also dead. At the AU Summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in January 2010, Col. Moammar Khaddafy “ delivered a rambling rebuke of fellow African heads of state after they chose to replace him as chairman of the African Union and failed to endorse his push for the creation of a United States of Africa” (The New York Times, Jan 31, 2010; p.A7). South Africa, Ethiopia and Nigeria were among the countries that opposed Khaddafy’s attempts to form a continental government, which many viewed as impractical given the political and economic disparities in Africa.

D. A More Effective Approach

Without question, the concept of an African Union is visionary and imperative for the long-term prosperity of Africa. The multiplicity of artificial boundaries and currencies on the continent impede economic growth, trade and free movement of people. Khaddafy was right when he argued that individual African states are too weak to negotiate with major powers like the European Union, the United States and China. But he bungled the African Union idea. What lessons can be learned and what steps needs to be taken to revive it because the idea of a United States of Africa is too important to die?

Lesson No. 1: The concept of Pan-Africanism or continental unity was too important to be left to the whims of a single leader or wrapped up in his personality cult. As a result, its fortunes rose and fell with the credibility or eccentricities of the leader.

The first problem with the African Union or the United States of Africa resided with the African leader actively championing and promoting it – Col. Moammar Khaddafy of Libya. He lacked democratic credentials. A controversial and mercurial leader, he seized power in Libya in 1969 and had been in power since.  An eccentric with an inflated ego, he projected himself as the leader of the Arab world but was rejected by the Arabs. In 1988, he orchestrated the Lockerbie bombing which brought down PAN AM aircraft, killing 277 passengers and flight crew. He admitted responsibility and paid $2.7 billion in compensation to the victims in 2003.

Col. Khaddafy has ruled Libya erratically with an iron fist and kept his people in a state of controlled chaos and confusion. Life is so unpredictable in Libya since it is subject to the megalomaniac whims of the Colonel. Libya, with a population of 5 million, earns more than $8 billion annually from oil exports but no one seems to know what Col. Khaddafy does with the oil money. Roads are cratered with yawning potholes; telephones are unreliable and there are few private sector jobs. Most workers are on the public payroll — about 800,000 — and have not had a real wage increase in about 20 years. Said Selma Iswid, a housewife addressing a Popular Committee meeting:

"The roads here might as well have been through the war in Chechnya. We are an oil- rich country, we should have better roads. They should put whoever built them on trial. All the facilities are in a very bad shape: services, transportation, health care. We are not satisfied with any of this" (The New York Times, Feb 14, 2001; p.A1).

Outside Libya, there were serious questions about Col. Khaddafy's vision for the African Union and his motives. Ghana's government-owned paper, The Mirror (July 15, 2000) was skeptical about its implementation:

"Though the idea is laudable and long overdue, and has received the verbal support of most African leaders, people are very skeptical of its successful implementation considering the fact that the continent is very rich in leaders who are more conscious of their personal gains than leaving foot prints of development during their tenure of office. For similar selfish reasons, ECOWAS, the sub regional body, has failed to implement most of its protocol on regional integration 25 years after it came into existence . . . The idea for economic Union for Africa is a noble one which would have been given serious consideration long ago, but whether AL-Quathafi, a man who had just emerged from international isolation can push hard for its fulfillment is another matter p.12).

An editorial in the Ghanaian paper, The Guide (July 12-18, 2000) even questioned the motives of Khaddafy and warned:

"Khaddafy’s sudden interest in Black Africa especially the United States of Africa is an issue that should not be taken lightly or for granted by the intelligentsia of sub-Saharan Africa. Just a little while ago, when America and Britain were pursuing Khaddafy for Lockerbie suspects, Khaddafy had the audacity to snub some prominent African Leaders including Nana Nelson Mandela that his supreme identity is in the Maghreb Union and not the OAU. When did the Maghreb Union become an affiliate of the OAU? When did Arabs become Africans?
Khaddafy is not only a desperate man; he is the man who has set for himself the continuation of the singular agenda of 'Arabising' Africa. It is nothing but the continuation of the colonialist tendencies of the Arabs of old.
As for my brother Rawlings, he had only been sucked into the whirlwind of this hidden agenda because of his limited knowledge of history and the delusion of immorality. The Arab ambition over Africa is more than 100 years old. It has cost us our civilization and our identity. Let no Black soul deceive himself that an Arab is his brother and let us understand that this has not got to do with Islam but the physical invasion of the land that the Creator gave to Black people" (p.6).

It would have been far better if the concept of the United States of Africa had been pushed by a commission rather than an individual leader.

Lesson No. 2: There was considerable confusion over what name the larger configuration of African states should be called: The African Union or the United Sates of Africa. Either term was problematic because it sounded “borrowed” or “copied” and thus lacked originality.

Too often in the post colonial period, African leaders copied blindly foreign paraphernalia and transplanted them in Africa. France once had an emperor; so Jean-Bedel Bokassa spent nearly a quarter of the GNP of the Central African Republic to crown himself "emperor" in 1979. Rome has a basilica; so too must Africa in Yamassoukrou, Ivory Coast.  The U.S. has a space center, so Nigeria built an $89 million Obasanjo Space Center. The continent is littered with the putrid carcasses of failed imported systems. Yet, the blind copying continues. Europe has the European Union; so too must Africa. Never mind that, in 2002, the Europeans themselves had not agreed to the final details of the Union. Britain was ambivalent about joining the EU; France wanted EU powers to be more centralized, while Germany favored more decentralization. But a Union modeled after EU Africa must have! Now, North America has the United States of America; so too must Africa! A far better term would be the Confederation of African States (CAS) or, simply, the African Confederation.

There are three ways in which a large polity can be organized:

The Unitary System, in which all important decisions are centralized at the capital city – as in the European model.
The Federal System, in which decision-making is decentralized but the center is till powerful – as in the American model.
The Confederal System, in which there is much greater decentralization of power and decision-making and the constituent states have more power than the center. This is the indigenous African model and the present-day equivalent is the Swiss canton system.

During colonial rule, the authoritarian colonial state centralized power and all decision-making at the capital. Since the colonial authorities were European, they chose their own "unitary state" systems, in which decisions were centralized in London, Paris and Lisbon. After independence, Africa was bequeathed a political model in which Africans of various ethnicities, religions and cultures were crammed into one state. One would have thought that African leaders would have dismantled the unitary colonial state, paid respect to their own indigenous heritage and adopted political configurations that allowed their constituent communities the autonomy they had enjoyed in pre-colonial times. In fact, America’s Founding Fathers drew inspiration from the ancient Iroquois Confederacy. According to Johansen (2009), “immigrants arrived in colonial America seeking freedom and found it in the confederacies of the Iroquois and other Native nations.” Instead, virtually all of the African nationalist leaders -- in the teeth of their own indigenous political heritage -- retained the "unitary state system," with the possible exception of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. But even there, federalism existed only on paper.

As it turned out, the unitary state system was not only unsuitable for Africa's multi-ethnic and diverse cultures but also became the source of Africa's problems with political instability, turmoil and civil wars. The dangerous concentration of power in the capital always tempted some maniac, wielding a bazooka, to seize the capital and use that power to enrich himself, his cronies, tribesmen and exclude everyone else (the politics of exclusion). This sets the stage for civil war and eventual implosion of the country. Nearly all of Africa’s civil wars since 1960 were started by politically-excluded groups. Further, all the rebel leaders had one place in sight to capture – the capital city, because that is where power laid.

Now, African leaders, in their infinite wisdom, seek to repeat this monumental political disaster with even greater concentration of power by modeling the African Union after the EU, where power and decisions will be centralized in Brussels. A far better model would be an African Confederation, with extensive devolution of power to reflect Africa's own heritage: The ancient empires of Ghana, Mali, Songhai and Great Zimbabwe were all confederacies and they lasted centuries (Ayittey, 2006; Diop, 1987; and Strife and Ifeka, 1971). Modern-day Switzerland is a confederation of 23 cantons – a much better model for African leaders to copy if they need to satisfy their xenophilic propensities.

Even then, there are strict rules for admission into the EU. For example, a prospective member must have a democratic government and its budget deficit must be within certain limits -- less than 6 percent of its gross domestic product. These tough conditions were intended to facilitate the harmonization of fiscal policies in the EU. By contrast, there were no such membership requirements for the African Union (AU). Any rogue African state -- democratic or not -- could join the AU. To be feasible, one would think that a minimum requirement for the AU would be "internal unity" within each African state. Are the Hutus and Tutsis united in Rwanda and Burundi? The Hausas and Yorubas in Nigeria? The Congolese? Arabs and black Africans in Sudan and Mauritania?  But there have been no such considerations.

Lesson No. 3: A more pragmatic approach to the African Union would start at the regional level: Unite those countries in ECOWAS, EAC, SADC, and so on before moving up to the continental union. In other words, seek modest successes with regional unions and then build upon them for the continental objective.

Continental Pan-Africanism is not dead. It can be revived by avoiding the mistakes of the OAU and the African Union.



REFERENCES

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Johansen, Bruce E. (2009). “Native American Ideas of Governance and U.S. Constitution” -- http://www.america.gov/st/peopleplace-english/2009/June/20090617110824wrybakcuh0.5986096.html

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