The African Union and New Strategies for Development in Africa B ...

Introduction

From the 1940s, the goal of collective self-development through a regional political framework has defined the pan-African agenda, in which different ideas, proposals, and institutional arrangements have been articulated. There has been a variegated dimension to the pan-African agenda, one of “many voices” and “one vision,” in which the ultimate objective is to ensure political renewal, reverse the trend of socioeconomic decline and marginalization, and mainstream Africa in the global political economy. Apart from the force of history and culture, there are two other related shared values and challenges by African countries. First is their overdependence on the external World, and second is the under-exploitation of their development potentials at the national, regional, and continental levels (African Union, 2006). These challenges, though of a disadvantaged nature, constitute the crucible on which the notions of unity and collective action are defined and gain meaning.

A single currency—the urge to reclaim the dignity of the African personality, a process characterized by political encounters, contours, divergences, contradictions, setbacks, and challenges—therefore underpins the pan-African struggle. Africa’s development constructs, of multiple and sometimes contradictory initiatives, mostly of underdeveloped potentials, reflect the dialectical twists of transition, continuities, and change in Africa’s development trajectory. Thus, from the Organization of African Unity (OAU) to the African Union (AU), as well as to the current debate on the formation of a union government and the United States of Africa, and—at the economic level—from the Lagos Plan of Action and the Final Act of Lagos to the African Alternative to the Structural Adjustment Programme and now to the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), these all exist in the same tradition, albeit with different ideological orientations and policy thrusts. Those initiatives situated in the same historical process are set in sharp contradictions that reflect the complexities and dynamics of contexts and social forces at play in Africa’s regional arena. For example, while the OAU privileges political cooperation and inter-state relationships, a union government is premised on the ultimate goal of political integration. While the Lagos Plan of Action celebrates economic self-reliance and appropriates a central role for the state in the command of the economy, NEPAD is market based and celebrates the liberating role of the private sector.