Is the African Union bound to fail?

IN his recent book on Africa, ‘Negrologie: Pourquoi l’Afrique meurt’, the French author Stephen Smith makes a sober assessment of Africa’s problems: “il faut cesser de transvestir les realites de l’Afrique en mêlant ce qui serait souhaitable a ce qui existeÂ… le present n’a pas d’avenir sur le continent’ (we need to stop dressing up the realities of Africa in mixing what is wishful to what exist..the present does not have a future on the continent).

As pessimistic as Stephen Smith sounds, his book to a large extent does highlight what is wrong with Africa and why, as the title suggests, the continent is dying. Such Afro-pessimistic analysis is fitting at two levels.First for obvious reasons, most of the speeches that marked Africa Day (May 25) and the founding of the Organisation of African Unity didn’t contain the therapy needed to lift the African Union out of its current impasse.They essentially bore the déjà-vu hallmarks of idealism.As such, pessimism could be a crucial entry point for a debate about Africa’s fate, especially if it has to be driven by the OAU’s successor, the AU.Second, we can make the claim about the African Union that just like the post-colonial state in Africa, it lacks any historicity and originality, ontologically that is, and it can’t be analysed outside the framework of existing state attempts at regional or continental integration, notably the most advanced attempt there is, the European Union.And this is particularly the case because the AU came into being in 2002 as a wishful ambitious project, loosely modelled around the EU.Yet in reality it is just a fusion of intentions without any meaningful institutional and programmatic follow-up.To illustrate this point, the AU even went further than the EU and is the world’s only regional or international organisation that recognises the right of members to intervene in a member state on humanitarian and human rights grounds.However, it is possibly the most ineffective when it comes to acting in this domain, as we have noted in various theatres of conflict, from Darfur to Côte d’Ivoire.This problem is not necessarily institutional or one of resources, but it arises chiefly from the fact that AU membership is based on formal sovereignty rather than a substantive definition of justice and values.It makes no practical demands on its members to be democratic or to respect human rights.This carte-blanche accommodation has in so many ways tainted the activities of the AU, which from the beginning was populated by authoritarian, abusive or unrepresentative states.As a consequence, the AU has serious legitimacy problems because a big part of its membership does not share the same values: Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi’s vision of democracy or human rights (if at all he has one) is substantially different from that of President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa or Amadou Toumani Touré of Mali.And one would have thought that after the ideological conflicts of the Cold War and the transformation of the OAU into the AU, there would henceforth be greater consensus around broad principles of human rights and democracy, both in theory and practice.In fact, most of the members pay lip service to these principles, as is evident in Sudan or Zimbabwe.These two members, despite flagrant human rights abuses and genocide in the case of the first, continue to be treated as members in good standing and they continue to operate à la carte within the AU.Students of comparative regional integration would note that one of the most successful engines of national institutional reform has been the European Union accession process, which has transformed the political landscape of Eastern Europe.The reason why it has been successful is that EU accession is a form of conditionality that provides large political and economic incentives to reform.It is completely back-loaded, rewarding countries only after reforms are completed based on transparent and hard-to-dilute criteria.The initiative moreover lies with the countries wanting to join the EU; if they don’t have the political will to join, no one is forcing them to.In the case of the African Union, all states irrespective of their polluted democratic credentials are full members and this hinders collective action, which in fact is the foundation of this continental body.Even the NEPAD African Peer Review Mechanism as a post-facto attempt at rewarding and naming exemplary AU members is still locked in its tracks with democracies such as Namibia (for unknown reasons) not even acceding to this lofty initiative.For the AU to bottom out of this impasse so early in its life, a vanguard of democratic states, (invoking the notion of variable geometry) to be led by South Africa must emerge.This could include democracies such as Namibia, Ghana, Mali and so on.Such an alliance of democratic states will have to think about a foreign policy that tries to hammer the language of good governance and democracy from within.Additionally it is also these states that should be at the heart of promoting the NEPAD peer review mechanism.To conclude, African leaders have not been sincere enough to look at the AU through what it wants to be and what it cannot be.The AU is not only weak on economic leverage, but it is most importantly weak on values and political will.Without change, the AU as an institution is bound to fail, not only because it was constructed from the top, but also because it is in so many more ways than one rotten at the top.* Alfredo Tjurimo Hengari is a PhD fellow in Political Science at the University of Paris Panthéon-Sorbonne, France.Such Afro-pessimistic analysis is fitting at two levels.First for obvious reasons, most of the speeches that marked Africa Day (May 25) and the founding of the Organisation of African Unity didn’t contain the therapy needed to lift the African Union out of its current impasse.They essentially bore the déjà-vu hallmarks of idealism.As such, pessimism could be a crucial entry point for a debate about Africa’s fate, especially if it has to be driven by the OAU’s successor, the AU.Second, we can make the claim about the African Union that just like the post-colonial state in Africa, it lacks any historicity and originality, ontologically that is, and it can’t be analysed outside the framework of existing state attempts at regional or continental integration, notably the most advanced attempt there is, the European Union.And this is particularly the case because the AU came into being in 2002 as a wishful ambitious project, loosely modelled around the EU.Yet in reality it is just a fusion of intentions without any meaningful institutional and programmatic follow-up.To illustrate this point, the AU even went further than the EU and is the world’s only regional or international organisation that recognises the right of members to intervene in a member state on humanitarian and human rights grounds.However, it is possibly the most ineffective when it comes to acting in this domain, as we have noted in various theatres of conflict, from Darfur to Côte d’Ivoire.This problem is not necessarily institutional or one of resources, but it arises chiefly from the fact that AU membership is based on formal sovereignty rather than a substantive definition of justice and values.It makes no practical demands on its members to be democratic or to respect human rights.This carte-blanche accommodation has in so many ways tainted the activities of the AU, which from the beginning was populated by authoritarian, abusive or unrepresentative states.As a consequence, the AU has serious legitimacy problems because a big part of its membership does not share the same values: Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi’s vision of democracy or human rights (if at all he has one) is substantially different from that of President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa or Amadou Toumani Touré of Mali.And one would have thought that after the ideological conflicts of the Cold War and the transformation of the OAU into the AU, there would henceforth be greater consensus around broad principles of human rights and democracy, both in theory and practice.In fact, most of the members pay lip service to these principles, as is evident in Sudan or Zimbabwe.These two members, despite flagrant human rights abuses and genocide in the case of the first, continue to be treated as members in good standing and they continue to operate à la carte within the AU.Students of comparative regional integration would note that one of the most successful engines of national institutional reform has been the European Union accession process, which has transformed the political landscape of Eastern Europe.The reason why it has been successful is that EU accession is a form of conditionality that provides large political and economic incentives to reform.It is completely back-loaded, rewarding countries only after reforms are completed based on transparent and hard-to-dilute criteria.The initiative moreover lies with the countries wanting to join the EU; if they don’t have the political will to join, no one is forcing them to.In the case of the African Union, all states irrespective of their polluted democratic credentials are full members and this hinders collective action, which in fact is the foundation of this continental body.Even the NEPAD African Peer Review Mechanism as a post-facto attempt at rewarding and naming exemplary AU members is still locked in its tracks with democracies such as Namibia (for unknown reasons) not even acceding to this lofty initiative.For the AU to bottom out of this impasse so early in its life, a vanguard of democratic states, (invoking the notion of variable geometry) to be led by South Africa must emerge.This could include democracies such as Namibia, Ghana, Mali and so on.Such an alliance of democratic states will have to think about a foreign policy that tries to hammer the language of good governance and democracy from within.Additionally it is also these states that should be at the heart of promoting the NEPAD peer review mechanism.To conclude, African leaders have not been sincere enough to look at the AU through what it wants to be and what it cannot be.The AU is not only weak on economic leverage, but it is most importantly weak on values and political will.Without change, the AU as an institution is bound to fail, not only because it was constructed from the top, but also because it is in so many more ways than one rotten at the top. * Alfredo Tjurimo Hengari is a PhD fellow in Political Science at the University of Paris Panthéon-Sorbonne, France.