Draft rules pushing for women candidates could lock Raila Odinga out of top AUC job

Law drafters at the African Union are making another bid that could lock out Kenya’s opposition leader Raila Odinga by proposing to restrict the next race for the Commission chairperson’s seat to female contenders.

Mr Odinga is the Kenya government-endorsed candidate to replace Chadian diplomat Moussa Faki Mahamat. But a proposal circulated to member states on Tuesday says only female contenders should be eligible in the next contest, even though the seat will be rotating to the Eastern Africa region.

The proposal is contained in the revised draft report — Preparations for the Election of Senior Leadership of the African Union Commission in February 2025.

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The report is the work of the AU’s Legal Counsel and Deputy Commission Chairperson’s Office, in conjunction with the Committee of Permanent Representatives, which must be submitted to the African Union Executive Council for approval before it is adopted by the Assembly.

It argues that the positions of chairperson and deputy chairpersons must be restricted to the principle of gender parity, meaning that holders of the two posts cannot be from the same gender at any time, a practice introduced in 2021. But it also argues, for the first time, that an incumbent of one gender should be replaced by an opposite gender at subsequent elections.

“Consequently, in accordance with the aforementioned guiding principle, the CP for the upcoming 2025 election must be female.Therefore, only female candidates will be considered for the position of CP, while only male candidates are eligible for the position of DCP," the report proposes.

“In order to uphold the principle of rotational gender parity, it has been concluded that the next Chairperson of the Commission should be a female, while the next Deputy Chairperson should be male.”

There has been only one-woman chairperson in the history of the African Union, South Africa’s Nkosazana-Dlamini Zuma, who served one term between 2012 and 2017. Until 2021, there was no restriction on who becomes deputy, even though the rotation practice was often that the deputy did not come from the same region as the chair.

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Dr Zuma was deputised by Kenya’s Erastus Mwencha while Faki’s deputy in his first term (2017-2021) was Ghana’s Thomas Kwesi. He is currently deputised by Rwanda’s Monique Nsanzabaganwa.

The election for the next African Union Commission is due next February and this report is supposed to design rules to be followed, based on the 2018 AU institutional reform structures as proposed by Rwandan President Paul Kagame and his team of experts.

The report will be tabled on March 16 before the Executive Council, which is composed of Foreign Affairs Ministers from the AU members, to decide if the proposals are suitable to make the AU more competitive, fair and representative.

Musalia Mudavadi, Kenya’s Prime Cabinet Secretary and minister for Foreign and Diaspora Affairs, will represent Kenya at the meeting that usually decides based on consensus.

While rotation has been generally opposed, some countries, especially in West Africa, have particularly resisted it, according to sources who spoke to The EastAfrican.

After the first draft of the report was circulated to members last month at the AU Summit, a West African country was a vocal opponent, suggesting instead that the rotation should be restricted to the positions of Chairperson and Deputy while the other six commissioners be let to compete.

The country has a serving Commissioner who is eligible for re-election but may be out of the race if the rotation applies to all positions.

In the new proposal, the report says there should be ‘partial restriction’ such that while the CP and DCP rotates between regions: Central, eastern, northern, southern and western; the six commissioners freely compete. It also says that commissioners eligible to compete should re-enter the race for their positions, subject to a nomination by a special panel created to vet candidates in their region.

“As a result, eligibility for re-election is attributed to the incumbent following nomination by their region. As such, the incumbent will compete with candidates from the next eligible region, based on inter-regional rotation following the English alphabetical order,” it says.

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“If a member of the Commission served twice in any role within the Commission, they are not eligible to compete for any senior leadership role within the Commission,” reads the report.

According to the 2018 decision on rotation, the next Commission Chairperson should come from the eastern African region, based on the ranking of regions per their alphabetical order in English.

Kenya and Rwanda have held Deputy Chairperson seats since the African Union was created in 2002. Tanzania held the Secretary-General post during the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), the precursor to the AU.

An earlier draft report had said countries that had held CP or DCP positions in the past cannot run for these positions until their peers in the region have had a bite at the cherry. The proposed rules limit eligibility only during the AU times, which means Tanzania and others in the eastern region may be eligible to nominate candidates. The report had also suggested that all the other six commissioners are also held on rotation but excluding regions that win the Chairperson of deputy chairperson positions.

In fact, this has been tradition at the AU in recent times. The new draft appends the proposal by saying serving commissioners eligible for re-election can run again, but by competing with other eligible regions and based on nomination by their respective regions.

This proposal will only become official AU policy once the Council adopts its content, and the Assembly endorses it. It could be a busy week for Kenyan diplomats.