Though no groundbreaking agreement was reached on integration, the two-day African Union summit that ended yesterday in Accra, Ghana was very far from being a failure. All the AU’s 53 member governments accept the principle of enhanced union — the main difference between them is the pace at which this is achieved. The majority opinion clearly leans toward an evolutionary approach, as set out by Nigeria’s new President Umaru Yar’Adua, building from regional cooperation to wider continental structures.
Unionist enthusiasts like Senegal have talked of setting up their own regional organizations if the AU does not work quickly toward the creation of some sort of a union government. This is odd, since throughout Africa frameworks for economic if not also political cooperation and integration already exists and Senegal belongs to one of them. The Economic Community of Western African States (ECOWAS) has 15 member countries, was established in 1975 and given a revised treaty in 1993. It includes Nigeria and has a total population in excess of 250 million. It has its own secretariat, a council of ministers and a Parliament, just like the EU on which it was modeled.
It must be wondered why Senegal should be proposing new regional structures. If unionist enthusiasts are serious in their continent-wide ambitions, surely they should be focusing first of proving the model can work at a regional level? Yet with the greatest respect ECOWAS has advanced all but slowly in its first 32 years in some measure because of the lack of political and financial commitment from member governments. A great deal of work remains to be done for instance on tariff harmonization and cross-border trade. Headquartered in Abuja, the capital of Nigeria, which makes up half the ECOWAS population, smaller member states have tended to take a minor role. Yet until such regional structures can be seen to be working successfully and bringing positive benefits to their member countries, the idea of creating a centralized AU administration is frankly absurd.
If regional organizations struggle to add the value they are supposed to be producing, the fate of an AU government, built prematurely on enthusiasm rather than realism will be direly humiliating. It should not be forgotten that the present EU with all its high ambitions for integration, was originally built simply around the post-war harmonization of trade in coal and steel, principally between Germany and France.
Alongside economic convergence on a regional basis, the AU can however set out its political stall in areas like sound governance, justice and human rights. Its predecessor Organization of African States (OAS) refused to condemn member governments for maladministration and tyranny. The AU does not. Though many delegates in Accra this week regret that former Liberian leader Charles Taylor is being tried for War Crimes in The Hague rather than in the Human Rights Court the AU is itself committed to creating, there is quiet satisfaction that the former dictator is being made to answer the grim list of charges laid against him.
