| Big challenges face a United States of Africa, ECA Governance panel concludes Addis Ababa, 07 May 2009 (ECA) - Although the arguments for a United States of Africa are self evident, the challenges to realizing it remain “pernicious and resilient,” said Professor Okey Onyejekwe, a senior UN official today in Addis Ababa. “Africa has many initiatives, plans and frameworks on integration and unity, but it is still not clear how the continent’s fragmentation can be overcome through a continental governance architecture?,” said Prof. Onyejekwe, who is the Director of ECA’s Governance and Public Administration Division. Prof. Onyejekwe made his remarks at a round table discussion where high level experts examined issues, problems and challenges of a United States of Africa. A panelist, Adele Jinadu, theorist and professor of political science, said sovereignty was a deep-seated challenge to unity. Negotiations surrounding how much power nations need to cede to a unitary body has made the push-pull interface between pan-Africanism and state sovereignty far from smooth, he said. A united Africa is, at its core, all about the restoration and assertion of African dignity, said Professor Michael Chege, an advisor on international development policy for the Kenyan government. As a witness to the birth of the African Unity movement in the 1960s with the creation of the Organization of African Unity, Prof Chege said there is neither strong feeling in today’s unity agenda for the issue of a United States of Africa nor a road map on how to achieve it. “The reality on the ground is that we see no involvement of ordinary Africans in this debate,” he said. The lack of citizen participation in the debates surrounding a United States of Africa was the subject of presentation by Dr. Emmannuel Akwetey, founding executive director of the Institute for Democratic Governance (IDEG). He said one of the reasons for a lack of citizen participation is the lack of access at the African Union. The lack of adequate citizen input has turned the African Union into a body that passes many resolutions, but has very little success in implementing them. Allowing more public input is a first step, he said. “You will not achieve integration – politically or economically – until you find a way to utilize the assets and resources that civil society provides,” he said. Economics has always figured in any notion of pan-Africanism, said Adebayo Olukoshi, a professor of political economy, who said over the decades, the idea of economic union had been by-passed or thwarted altogether by the sovereign self-interest of nations and the outside pressure of former colonial masters. He said this was still the case today, where most of the funding for regional economic communities (RECs) comes from western donors. “So the question of economic integration in Africa is not just a financial one; it’s a political question, and we need to be very clear where we want to go and how to get there,” said Olukoshi. African heads of state decided at the last Summit in Addis Ababa that the African Union should transform into the African Union Authority. Chrysantus, Ayangafac, senior researcher at the Institute for Security Studies in Addis Ababa, said the new Authority should have a mix of intergovernmental and supra-national abilities. He said the Authority should be capable of initiating policy in areas that are not controversial, such as global warming, and should have power to implement policies, through directives and other means. “Without such strength, the new African Union Authority will suffer the same problems as the current African Union Commission,” he said.
Issued by the ECA Information and Communication Service Tel: 251 11 5445098 |
|
| |
|