African leaders plan union

ACCRA – African leaders have agreed to speed up the economic and political integration of their continent to pursue the goal of a United States of Africa, but they gave themselves more time to study how to achieve it.

The decision was announced close to midnight on Tuesday after an African Union summit in the Ghanaian capital Accra. It represented a compromise after three days of sometimes heated debate between a few leaders who wanted to set up a continental African government immediately, and others who favoured a more gradual, step-by-step approach.”We emerge from the debate with a common vision in principle for the realisation of a union government,” Ghanaian President John Kufuor said in his summing up of the summit’s work.”We all have a shared vision of a united, vibrant continental union,” he said.The summit agreed to set up a committee of AU ministers to study how the establishment of a federated African state stretching from the Cape to Cairo, under a single union government, would affect national sovereignties and existing regional economic blocs.It would also consider a ‘road map’ and timeframe for the construction of a United States of Africa that would be included in a report to be presented to the next summit of the 53-nation African Union to be held in January.The decision was a setback for at least two leaders, Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi and Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade, who had publicly advocated the immediate formation of a continental government.Nampa-ReutersIt represented a compromise after three days of sometimes heated debate between a few leaders who wanted to set up a continental African government immediately, and others who favoured a more gradual, step-by-step approach.”We emerge from the debate with a common vision in principle for the realisation of a union government,” Ghanaian President John Kufuor said in his summing up of the summit’s work.”We all have a shared vision of a united, vibrant continental union,” he said.The summit agreed to set up a committee of AU ministers to study how the establishment of a federated African state stretching from the Cape to Cairo, under a single union government, would affect national sovereignties and existing regional economic blocs.It would also consider a ‘road map’ and timeframe for the construction of a United States of Africa that would be included in a report to be presented to the next summit of the 53-nation African Union to be held in January.The decision was a setback for at least two leaders, Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi and Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade, who had publicly advocated the immediate formation of a continental government.Nampa-Reuters