Time to Project AU Power in the AU's 10th Year!

“The Accidental Ecowas & AU Citizen”:

Africa's rise and how it’s Time to Project AU Power!

By E.K.Bensah Jr

If there were ever a greatest exponent of serendipity, it must have been when I found myself in the home of the African Union in March 2011. Unbeknownst to many, I met my kindred spirit—Mr. Stuart Hastings of towardsunity.org—in person for the first time. I had met him two years earlier online when I was searching through tomes of material on comparative regional integration and trying to find out also whether there were other souls concerned more with the comparative approach on regionalism than simply the single-minded one where, say, the AU, EU or ECOWAS is the main focus.

I would come across Stuart’s site and immediately spark a conversation with him about how the tectonic plates were shifting towards regional unions, and how we both needed to play a part in that change.

His website, then as now, was clear: to travel the world from his home town of Canada and return to produce a book on how far regional unions, such as the EU, MERCOSUR; African Union; and ASEAN can promote promote peace and humanity through democratic dispensations they offer in their institutional structures, and how it was important to re-think some of the current narratives driving hegemons in those respective unions.

So it would be that Stuart and I would meet on 19 March, 2011 at Lime Tree cafe, situated in the rather plush Boston Day Spa on the lush and swanky Bole Road in Addis. I will never forget that day for the people who were there—Stuart Hastings; and a young official of the UN Economic Commission for Africa who might never confess in public he is a Pan-Africanist—and for the fact that after I got back to my hotel, I would catch the news on BBC and Al-Jazeera that a multi-state coalition had began a military intervention in Libya to implement United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973.

I had had a stress-free visit to the AU building days earlier, and so it seemed a bit surreal to see diplomats fluttering in and out after 19 March all over television. It was even harder to believe that the-then almost-completed AU building would play host to an apparent impotence of AU officials and policy-makers it would soon host almost a year later.

It is easy to speculate that it is probably these apparently-impotent AU policy-makers who have just witnessed the inauguration of the new, 28-floor AU building at the just-ended 18^th session of the AU in the Ethiopian capital. After the cacophony over the past few days of this Chinese gift to the Africans and the numerous speculations that have abounded over possible quid-pro-quos that might be associated with this expensive gift, it's time to get serious.

There's no gainsaying that China will expect some favours from Africa for having built this building that supposedly towers over the whole of Addis. To harp on it, in my view, is as relevant as claiming that the Europeans and Western donors who pay some sixty percent of many African countries’ budget would expect these-same countries to be indebted to them. The argument is even a non-starter. What I would hope we would talk about are two major things.

First – how it symbolises a renaissance of South-South cooperation and second, how it is a projection of the increasing power of the African Union.

Symbolism of the AU building

Both experts and amateurs on African integration, and Western journalists alike have been speculating over what China is likely to expect from the building they have donated to the African Union. What, for me, took the biscuit was no less than the venerable BBC World Service’s very respected “News Hour” programme on Sunday 29^th January interviewing the East African correspondent Will Ross, with an angle that was Sino-African centred in a way that suggested that China wants our natural resources, knows Africa is rising and so wants to capitalize on that rise. In my view, this is not analysis; it is common-sense. There really is no such thing as a free lunch. It is just that with the Chinese, they deliver that lunch faster and with few conditions. That may be the beauty of the relationship, and I believe what African integration watchers all over must be doing right now is to use this as an opportunity to explore and enhance the Sino-African relationship.

In 2010, UNCTAD launched the Economic Development in Africa report. Entitled “South-South Cooperation: Africa and the New Forms of Development Partnerships” it examined recent trends in the economic relationships of Africa with other developing countries and the new forms of partnership that are animating those relationships.

The increasing role of large developing countries in global trade, finance, investment and governance, coupled with their rapid economic growth, has stimulated debate on the implications for Africa´s development.

The report urges African nations to intensify efforts at developing better productive capacities to maximize their gains from the emerging partnerships and the gradual global shift of economic power to the East from the West. African countries, the report states “have to produce goods with high income elasticities of demand and that present greater opportunities for export market expansion”.

The report comprises five chapters dealing with the challenges and opportunities in South-South cooperation, Africa’s trade with developing countries, southern official flows to Africa, southern Foreign Direct Investment to Africa and making South-South Cooperation work for Africa.

The report concludes that Africa-South Cooperation—whether it is Sino— or Indio—not only has the potential to enhance Africa´s capacity to address its development challenges but the full realization of the benefits requires gearing cooperation towards the development of productive capacities across the region.

Bottom line is that Africa as a continent does not yet have a unified strategy relating to Africa-South cooperation and this is evidenced in part, for example, by the way in which the 2010 report was produced by UNCTAD, and not the African Union. Going forward, the AU can use the donation of the building to consolidate the Sino-African relationship—perhaps around infrastructure? — and create an effective strategy round it in a way that will slowly and surely put paid to the West’s.

Projection of power in the AU’s 10^th anniversary year!

Who has not seen pictures of the Brussels-based European Commission on TV and thought “wow, that’s a huge building!” And for those who have seen it in person, there’s no gainsaying it’s a rather imposing building. This contrasts sharply with what Stuart Hasting related to in one of our numerous discussions of his globe-trotting in Asia to see the secretariat of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) in Nepal. 

First and most importantly, after having been established in 1985, one would have thought that they might have upgraded their building a little. Pictures online of the Secretariat are consistent with the descriptions associated with Hasting’s sojourn anecdotes. This has prompted much speculation among those of us committed to propagating the development of regional unions and groupings – especially in the developing world— as good – and the greatest exemplification of the very-necessary projection of power the AU so needs to do. Given that this is coming in the tenth anniversary of the African Union, this could not but be a better and fitting presage of Africa’s putative rise!

In 2009, in his capacity as a “Do More Talk Less Ambassador” of the 42^nd Generation—an NGO that promotes and discusses Pan-Africanism--Emmanuel gave a series of lectures on the role of ECOWAS and the AU in facilitating a Pan-African identity. Emmanuel owns "Critiquing Regionalism" (http://critiquing-regionalism.org). Established in 2004 as an initiative to respond to the dearth of knowledge on global regional integration initiatives worldwide, this non-profit blog features regional integration initiatives on MERCOSUR/EU/Africa/Asia and many others. You can reach him on ekbensah@ekbensah.net / Mobile: +233-268.687.653.

ECOWAS Leaders to Replace Yar’Adua as Chairman - ‘His tenure, the worst ever’

From Taiwo Adisa and Christian Okeke
Monday, December 21, 2009

THE failure of President Umaru Yar’Adua to return to the country, 28 days after he left for a medical treatment in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, has taken its negative toll on the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Heads of State and Government Summit which was scheduled to be held today (Monday). President Yar’Adua was elected chairman of the organisation in Abuja on December 19, 2008 for a period of one year after President Blaise Campaore of Burkina Faso served out the final leg of his third non-consecutive tenure which lasted from 2006 to 2008. His first tenure was in 1990.

Before the unavoidable shift of the date for the summit to January 18, 2010, the heads of state were expected to consider the performance of West Africa’s economy and the 2009 work programme of the institution, which is articulated around five priority areas of activity and expected to be presented to them by the President of the Commission, Dr. Chambas, as part of the 2009 annual report.

The priority areas are the completion of work on the creation of a customs union, negotiations on the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPA), the development of agricultural and environmental policies as well as the state of peace and security in the region.

Apart from those areas, the summit was also to consider the Council of Ministers’ report which, among other things, includes recommendations on various sectoral programmes from such meetings as the ECOWAS Ministers of Health, Culture, Justice as well as Telecommunications and ICT.

It would have also considered the guidelines for the preparation of report on the ECOWAS multilateral surveillance mechanism. The ministers had ended their meeting in Abuja on Saturday, November 21, in preparation for presentation of the report to the heads of state.

The regional leaders were expected at the botched summit to sign some supplementary acts and decisions, including such areas as telecommunications and information, communication and technology (ICT) as well as the establishment of a regional copyright observatory.

A major event at the summit, the Nigerian Tribune gathered, would have been the replacement of President Yar’Adua who emerged the sixth Nigerian leader to chair the organisation in 2008 after Olusegun Obasanjo (1978), Muhammadu Buhari (1985), Ibrahim Babangida (1986 - 1988), Sani Abacha (1996 - 1998) and Abdulsalam Abubakar (1998 - 1999).

Indications emerged that the regional leaders will, in January, not give in to any move to re-elect President Yar’Adua for a fresh mandate under any guise, owing to what sources mainly termed his “leadership without direction.”

A source told the Nigerian Tribune that the tenure of President Yar’Adua was one of the worst to be experienced by the Authority of Heads of State and Government of the Commission, which was set up by Article 7, 8 and 9 of the Treaty and which defined its composition and functions.

More from: http://odili.net/news/source/2009/dec/21/615.html

Will the Real "Regional Integrationist" Stand Up?

Rare is the "regional integrationist that will not concede defeat against what I consider the Eurocentric paradigm of the EU being the de facto trend-setter of global regional integration. Even more rare is the one that will openly advocate "the possibility of a UN reform in which regional organisations would be given seats in the Security Council along with states."

What is not strange is who is doing the advocating -- none other than Luk Van Langenhove of the United Nations University Comparative Regional Integration Studies [UNU-CRIS]. It is a delicious irony that the Belgian be based at a research institution on regional integration that is also home to one of the most advanced regions in the West--Flanders.

This ostensible little detail about the regions is important, in my view, because as I read the article linked on the UNU-CRIS website, I could not help but mull over the use of the word regions, especially in the context of EU integration.

Langenhove makes an interesting an important point that:

The EU is the world's most advanced form of supranational regionalism. It has managed to develop a model that incorporates political elements in a deep economic integration, and challenges existing assumptions about governance.

.

This level of sophistication seems to have a lot to do with the EU's Committee of Regions that has played an important role in cementing this so-called "deep economic integration." One website describes the CoR as:

The Committee of Regions is a new advisory body established by the
Maastricht Treaty, to take into account the views of regional and local
government in European decision making. The advisory Committee of Regions is
a compromise between the aspirations of powerful regions in federally
organised member states (such as Germany, Spain and Belgium), which have
long asked for direct influence on EU decision making, and the views of much
more centralised member states (such as the UK, Denmark and the Netherlands)
whose regional governments have only derived powers from a strong central
government.

A very superficial response to the EU's Committee of Regions was to think how one could be replicated elsewhere, say, in the African Union countries, where a number of countries--say many along the West african sub-region--fall under the ambit of regions. In my own country of Ghana, there are no less than ten regions, with regional ministers and district chief executives of those regions. This all for a country of roughly 22 million!

So, I can most definitely conceive of an AU that has a system like the EU's CoR, where regions are twinned and affiliated in a manner that they act as separate entities within the states they are part of.

But the operative word, today, is "states".

Van Langenhove prefaces his article with some history about states and the Westphalian order. As regards the latter, he maintains:

The Westphalian order that emerged in Europe and now spans the world proved to have a stabilising effect, making it difficult to change borders to create bigger units, especially now that war has largely been abandoned as a means of expanding territory. But some existing states are under pressure to split up as a result of nationalism and calls for cultural autonomy.

The alarm bells that the author gives about the stability of the Westphalian system--and how that is is danger is more relevant, because it means that the system is imperfect and can be modified. But does that mean that regions are the answer to resolving those potential dangers?

The author does not go this way in saying the region is a panacea. Rather, he argues that:

I myself believe that an announcement of the "death of the state" is – to paraphrase Mark Twain – gravely exaggerated. In the foreseeable future, states will remain important centres of governance. But in an attempt to face the challenges of globalisation, states can – on a voluntary basis – turn to world and local regions to complement and even strengthen their power. As such, the world of states would gradually become a world of states and of regions.

Regions as Complementary Roles
So, in fact, regions are complements to the nation state--and not substitutes. World and local regions helping to complement and strengthen the power are important in going this way. Note what Van Langenhove says about the EU:

European integration has been accompanied by "de-federalisation": the emergence of sub-national regional governance. The EU is not just a collection of 27 member states; it is also an association of hundreds of local regions. Regions can be found at all territorial levels. One could organise nice academic debates about what a region actually is, but a more pragmatic approach is just to accept the plurality of the concept and focus on what regions are not. They are not sovereign states!

In my own country of Ghana, the Ashanti region--the second biggest region after the Northern region--is renowned for having called for independence from Ghana many years ago. Belgium's own recent troubles that lasted more than six months when the relatively stronger Flanders region wanted to do what looked like a split from Bruxelles-capitale politicking is a testament of the potential divisiveness of ensuring strong regions within states.

States won't disappear
Thing, though, is that states are not going to go away any time soon--neither will regions. Extrapolate this to the international level, and it seems likely that most regional organisations that we know will not go away any time soon either! Rather, I foresee that they will do the natural thing of evolving and transforming into bigger entities, such as ECOWAS Secretariat into an ECOWAS Commission, and the former OAU into the African Union in 2003--very much modelled on a hybrid between the United Nations and the European Union.

That ASEAN now has a charter, where the EU does not is not necessarily an indication of the sophistication of that ten-member grouping, but rather one of the decision to evolve into a more supra-national entity with what is considered legal personality.

These are certainly big ideas coming from a big article, and a lot more could be said. In the interests of time, I will broach this article at another time, for the ideas have tremendous resonance in the regional integration paradigm. That the EU is to play a greater role in the development of regional integration worldwide is a palatable idea.

It is a shame, therefore, to see it using the Economic Partnership Agreements as a stick to disrupt the regional integration initiatives of the AU countries.

Still, Van Langenhove's point here is not to be sneezed at, and I sincerely believe that it is providing the grounds for a critical and progressive look at regional organisation as well:

The multiple world of regions could be a way to replace the illusion of a single national identity with the more realist view that people hold plural regional identities. As such, the world of regions might not only be a more complex world but also one with more chances of peace and freedom. Europe can help to make this challenging vision real.

Three-Day Accra Meeting on ECOWAS Free Movement--Still Valid?

As newly-elected Sierra Leonian president Koroma returns from meeting both ECOWAS and Mano River Union officials, ECOWAS ministers are meeting today, Tuesday, here in Accra.

The objective of their meeting is to discuss ECOWAS's free movement protocol.

Top on the agenda will be:

ways of overcoming problems militating against the implementation of the protocol

dealing effectively in countering the ignorance of citizens about their rights under the 1979 protocol

effectively dealing with the harmonisation of the ECOWAS passport, adopted by Headds of State of Government in 2000, "including the incorporation of biometric features such as digital photographs and thumb prints which not only enhance security but also reduce the possibility of fraud and forgery" (from:http://www.afriquenligne.fr/index2.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=9246&pop=1&page=0&Itemid=115

While we can balk at CARICOM earlier this year for having failed to "secure" a free movement protocol by way of its Cricket World Cup, we can at least hope they might also be monitoring events worldwide to see how best to bring into fruition a visa-free area -- as exempplified by the ECOWAS-zone in 2007 -- where West African citizens can veritably make any of the fifteen countries their residence for a good 90 days, before regularising.

Right now, though, the ECOWAS passport, in my view, ought to be harmonised in ALL countries.

For it to be applicable in only SIX member states some 28 years after the free protocol was adopted is a woeful expression of where ECOWAS has gone. These six countries currently using the passport are: Benin, Guinea, Liberia, Niger, Nigeria and Senegal ; the others using an ECOWAS travel certificate are: Burkina Faso, Cote d'Ivoire, Guinea, The Gambia, Ghana, Niger, Nigeria and Sierra Leone

"Fixed deadlines" and "operationalisation" come to mind in a fast and furious way!

Here's hoping that the leaders meeting in the three-day meet here in Accra will be (im)pressed upon by us--common and concerned citizens--to come up with a date that is more definitive than one comparable to what is looking like a pie-in-the-sky date of 2009 for the ECO--ECOWAS' regional currency.

In checking ECOWAS's news website here, the last meeting you see is that of 19 September!

Without a google search, how on earth would anyone have known about this meeting? ECOWAS, PULL your socks up.

You are now a Commission--and things gotta get a-changing...

Now, chance would be a fine thing!

ECOWAS -- The "Mother of all Regional Economic Communities in Africa"? (So Says EAC)

At least, this was what the visiting ambassador from the East African Community, Julius Onen, to the ECOWAS Commission on 24 July said. He is reputed to have said this when he was "exposed" to the ECOWAS Operational system.

This was no ordinary visit. It was one from no less than the five-member East African Community, which recently accepted Rwanda and Burundi in its fold. What is most significant about this visit is that it goes to underscore the very essence of the regional integration I had been adavocatinig ever since I started this blog, and way back in 2004, when I set up RegionsWatch.

It was conceived of, inter alia, as a way of sharing information about different kinds of regionalisms. To see that even without my instrumentality, this is happening(!) is a very positive sign. Maybe. it's possible that the long enough you preach your word out there on the internet, the more likely someone, somewhere is going to see and pass the word on;-) Someone might be patting their back for promoting this exchange, I'm sure!

Either way, it is all-so-exciting to see such important developments, and when these are expressed through information sharing and best practices, it becomes all the more interesting...and uncanny!

Best practices on regional integration are not new; the UN's Economic Commission for Africa created the Assessing Regional Integration in Africa(ARIA) as a way of doing just that.

In my estimation, however, it had served more to use ARIA as a way of monitoring and evaluating regional integration than using it to look at best practices in regional integration.

Either way, I'm grinning like a chesire-cat at the idea that suddenly, as if by magic, it is being discussed in no less than a place like ECOWAS that has moved progressively on communicating what it does to the ECOWAS citizens--and beyond--albeit in a painfully slow manner.

A quick look at the Communications department of the ECOWAS Commission reveals some interesting ideas about where ECOWAS would like to see itself. As to the operationalisation of these ideas, one lives in hope. It is good to see that some of the following have been slated:

Activities



· The West African Bulletin

· ECOWAS in Brief

· Publication on ECOMOG

· Brochure on the new ECOWAS Commission

Coming back specifically to the context of the press release from the newly-designed ECOWAS Commission website, it is important to disclose one very important piece of information about the future of EAC-ECOWAS relations, as well as the EAC itself:

Ambassador Onen disclosed the EAC’s plans to transform into a commission and
intensify its collaboration with African States and RECs as evidenced by the
bi-annual tripartite meetings with the Common Market for Eastern and Southern
Africa (COMESA) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC).

I've blogged a number of times about the EAC, and quite a few times about ECOWAS.

The last comparison I made between EAC and ECOWAS yielded in this post. It was all about communication.

I'm glad to be blogging about something more concrete now. Let's keep fingers crossed for more of these positive developments!!

Towards a borderless ECOWAS by 2020?

Even when there appears to be grandiloquent discussions on the creation of an African Union government by 2025, the West African regional grouping of Ecowas is talking about a borderless West Africa by 2020.

Once again, this raises the question of why so far a date? Last week's debate at Ghana's Teacher's Hall raised the issue of "instantists"; "rapidists", and "gradualists", in my view, polarising the issue greatly.

These classifications suggest that there are those, respectively, that want to pursue AU government instantly, rapidly, and gradually.

For ECOWAS leaders meeting at the 32nd summit in Abuja, I suspect those that had proposed the date of 2020 might have fallen prey to such classifications. The question is: how helpful are these are moving the issue of comprehensive integration forward? Comprehensive, because, in my view, even if there's an unbearable lightness of being West African, I think ECOWAS has not done a bad job.

Elsewhere in the Voice of America coverage of the summit, the article touches on the right of residence:

problems are still plaguing the plan. For instance, under a current provision, residents of ECOWAS member states can live in another member state for up to 90 days without obtaining a visa, but there is no provision for long-term residence.

Before this explanation, rationale is given of why ECOWAS is looking for a borderless West Africa:

The purpose of a border-free zone, first thought of by ECOWAS in the 1980s, is to allow the free movement of goods and people throughout the zone.

It is important to note that this meeting was a landmark one, as it saw the swearing in of Ghanaian lawyer Dr.Mohammed Ibn Chambas as the de facto President of the heretofore ECOWAS Commission, as well as adoption of interim report of the Commission for 2007, which stated:

the economy of the sub-region recorded a GDP growth of 6.1 percent in 2006 as against 5.5 percent in 2005, observing however, that the high prices of petroleum products posed a challenge for the economies of individual states

Please find above the organigramme of the new commission, which I culled from the newly-designed ECOWAS website.