allAfrica.com: Africa: Amoako Cautiously Optimistic About African Union and Regional Integration (Page 1 of 3)

Africa: Amoako Cautiously Optimistic About African Union and Regional Integration

The third African Development Forum closes its doors Friday in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, after a week of debate on regional integration in Africa, organised by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA). Steering the discussion -- involving 1000 or more delegates from the world of politics, economics, academia and civil society -- was the UN agency's executive secretary, K.Y. Amoako of Ghana.

With the high-profile NEPAD (the New Partnership for Africa's Development) initiative taking centre stage and the African Union (the replacement of the Organisation of African Unity) a priority on the agenda in Addis, allAfrica.com's Ofeibea Quist-Arcton asked Amoako how he sees the future of the continent.

OAU/AU -- the challenges ahead

Q: Let's start with the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) which has in many ways signally failed citizens of the continent, with perhaps the exception of the fight against apartheid. When you look at the conflicts raging all over Africa and see that the OAU has been unable to resolve them, you ask will the African Union (AU) be able to do any better?

A: I think that's the discussion we are having now at the ADF here in Addis. Whether the AU will do better or not depends on how we set up the African Union. I'm an economist, but I'm also an historian at the same time. I like to look back. Why didn't certain things work, what lessons do you draw from them?

In building the African Union, so that it can perform these functions better than the OAU did -- granted the OAU did a lot of good things in some areas, but still there are some failures too -- we need to draw lessons.

To me, looking at the African Union, the institutions are important. How do you sequence them? We cannot do everything at the same time. So, if conflict prevention is important, how do you set up the parliament? How do you set up some of the commissions etc to tackle some of these problems?

If the architecture is right, and if the commitment and the will are there, I think they will be able to do better than the OAU.

Q: Are the commitment and the political will there, assuming the architecture -- the building blocks are in the right place at the right time?

A: It depends at what level you are talking about. If you're talking about the political will, the political commitment, I think it's mixed.

Q: How mixed?

A: (LAUGHS). I think you have some leaders who are very committed to this, who have been driving this process. But as long as we have poor governments in our own countries, as long as we have leaders who are motivated by personal greed -- or whatever you call it -- they can never have the political will, and, unfortunately, we have quite a few.

Q: But doesn't that doom the African Union to failure before it's even been set up, because greedy leaders are not going to change, or are they?

A: Let's see how things move within the next year. I think in a year from now, let's talk about it seriously. Because, look, we are having this debate now, here. Tremendous issues are being raised and a number of recommendations are being put on the table. All these issues you and I have been talking about are being raised by hundreds of people here. We are going to get some results, some analysis, that are going to go to the (OAU) Council of Ministers in the next two weeks. They have to take it up. We have to take this to Pretoria (where the OAU leaders are to meet to usher in the AU in July).

The real test, in my view, now that we have tried to open up the process of consultations, of discourse, the real test is going to be how -- over the next year -- the leadership of this continent are going to hear the voices of the people, their recommendations, and put them to the test.

Defining priorities for regional integration

Q: Next to ADF III, the third African Development Forum. Regional integration being the theme, how realistic is that in Africa? When you look at the regional organisations around the continent, some are strong, some are weak, some duplicate, some are non existent.

A: Somebody asked me a question and I said it's something we should do. The imperatives of regional integration have always been a dream; sometimes it's been an ambitious dream, sometimes it's been a false dream. But if you start with the founding fathers to where we've come today, it's clear that Africa cannot really be a major player on the world scene unless we cooperate more regionally, unless we build larger markets, unless we exploit our economies of scale.

All these wars cannot be effectively stopped until we begin to learn to live together. So, I think in the long term, in the medium and short term, for the economic and political development of this continent, we need to move towards that.

web allafrica.com	Enter your search terms	Submit search form
OR subscribers use AllAfrica's premium search engine


Use our pull-down menus to find more stories