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Welcome to work Mr Mahamat: Here’s how to get AU moving

Wednesday June 21 2017
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African Union Commission chairman Moussa Faki Mahamat. FILE PHOTO | AFP

By NGILA MWASE

Moussa Faki Mahamat has assumed office as African Union Commission Chairman at a time of unprecedented continental challenges and unpredictability of global policies and actions.

Mr Mahamat comes in with impeccable credentials. He is both familiar with the AU system and expectations of member states, having worked for the AU’s predecessor, the Organisation of African Unity and been both Chadian foreign minister and prime minister.

But for various reasons, the AUC chairperson’s post is now a very trying assignment. In the early years of the OAU, the chief diplomat’s work was well defined. The Organisation’s raison deter revolved around decolonisation and pan-Africanism.

The key founding fathers — Presidents Kwame Nkrumah (Ghana), Gamal Abdel Nasser (Egypt), Sekou Toure (Guinea), Ahmed Ben Bella (Algeria), Julius Nyerere (Tanzania) and Emperor Haile Selassie (Ethiopia) – were committed to the OAU project. They could, to quote President Ben Bella, “die a bit” for Africa’s liberation.

Major African crises could be resolved through soundings, exchanges and agreements between these giants. This eased the work of the OAU administrative secretary-general.

However, membership of the continental body has risen from 33 countries in 1963 to 55 in 2017, including the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic that now sits side by side with Morocco following its re-admission after a 33-year boycott.

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Decisions involving each and every member state are harder to reach, let alone be efficiently implemented. Thus despite the transformation of the OAU into the AU in 2002 and further transformation of the AU Secretariat into a Commission, the continental body remains, as Rwandan President Paul Kagame put it, “a dysfunctional organisation with limited credibility among member states, global partners and citizens alike.”

The new AU Chair must strive to reset and inject new dynamism into its body politic.

The AU policy menu already set out in Vision 2063 with its somewhat open-ended, broad mandate mission and strategies is facing new development paradigms and tremendous changes in global geopolitical configurations, rapid technological advance, inhibitions on flows of factors of productions and threats to planet Earth, such as climate change and terrorism.

For example, globalisation, over which Africa voiced strong reservations, is now perceived by the Anglo-Saxons as a precursor for trade deficits and job losses resulting in a distaste for the international trading system and ensuing trade agreements.

Whether this will adversely affect the USA’s Africa Growth and Opportunities Act (Agoa) or the planned EU-ACP Economic Partnership Agreements, only time will tell. One major causality is the 2015 Paris Climate Change accord, now ditched by the Trump administration.

Equally worrying is heightened nationalism, inward-looking protectionist trade policies and anti-immigration platforms (a major reason for Brexit) by significant segments of the population in the Northern Hemisphere.

The AU can spearhead African responses to these new global challenges. Juxtaposing Vision 2063 with other global strategic missions such as the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals 2030 and national visions with short- and medium time horizons would help build synergies, guide implementation and avoiding duplication of effort.

But the greatest problem facing the new AU boss is financial. Over 90 per cent of AU programmes, especially peacekeeping operations are externally funded. In the 2017 budget of $439 million, only 26 per cent is targeted to be internally sourced. By December 2016 only a few member states had fully met their commitments; a total of 15 member states had not contributed a single cent.

A related issue is the search for alternative financing mechanisms. The 2016 Kigali Summit settled on a 0.2 per cent levy on certain imports of member states.

Even as it was being pushed, fewer than 10 countries showed enthusiasm for it; and since then only four to five countries have been instituting what it takes to set aside this sum for the AU ! It may well be that the traditional mechanisms of assessed mandatory contributions and voluntary contributions for particular extra-budgetary activities as is the case with the UN ( with sanctions for non-compliance) may be the way to go.

Finally, the new AUC chief and his Secretariat face a number of immediate problems. They include devastating civil wars in South Sudan and Somalia and potential for instability in the Great Lakes region.

There are ongoing terrorist threats from Boko Haram (Nigeria), Al-Shabaab (Somalia) and Al Qaeda in the Maghreb (Mali). There are potential secessionist movements in a dozen or so African countries challenging the OAU/AU principle of the sanctity of inherited colonial borders. Then there are disagreements on such governance issues as the suitability or otherwise of the International Criminal Court in reinforcing the criminal justice system in Africa.

Some countries are leaning towards withdrawal from the ICC, while others want the Court with amendments to its founding Rome Statute.

Thus the plate of Alhaj Moussa Faki Mahamat is completely full.

Professor Ngila Mwase has worked closely with the OAU/AU and the regional economic communities. E-mail:[email protected]

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