The African Union building in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
EMOTIONS were kept on a tight leash at last week’s African Union (AU)
summit. Too much was at stake in the almost ritualised encounters
between African presidents and mainly western donors, about the cost of
conflict and the price of peace, for either side to risk dropping their
guard.
There was a striking exception and, appropriately, the reason was the late Nelson Mandela. His memory invoked the loudest applause when the plenary hall at the AU’s headquarters in Addis Ababa was named after him at Thursday’s opening ceremony.
The next day, shortly before the summit closed, Mali’s new president briefly lost his composure while he was paying tribute to the great man.
"I am sorry, Madiba," Ibrahim Boubacar Keita said, dabbing his eyes. "But it is human, I am human," he went on, apologising for his tears.
Mali has teetered on the edge very recently, pushed there by a combination of dismal leadership, a coup, corruption and the violent opportunism of Islamic extremists. The home of one of Africa’s great civilisations was rescued from the brink, thanks to French and African military intervention and generous international funding for a return to democracy. Mr Keita won last year’s elections and his emotional debut at the AU’s podium was an occasion for collective satisfaction.
Little else at the summit was clear-cut, although optimists claimed progress in the AU’s declared drive to bring an end to the financial, military and even psychological dependency of many of its 54 member states on wealthy outsiders.
A history of dithering and division over the creation of a standby military force, able to jump into action to nip conflicts in the bud, was papered over. Instead, South Africa led the case for a stop-gap African Capacity for Immediate Response to Crises, with a dozen states volunteering to join the vanguard.
But uncomfortable questions remain. Why did Africa’s brooding giant, Nigeria, decline to sign up?
Where is the proof that African governments are ready to start replacing European, North American and Asian ones, paying much more to enforce and keep the peace in conflict countries?
The price will be high but the reward will be an unambiguous message to the world that the continent is solving its problems. The need is blatant: just before the summit, the Pretoria-based Institute for Security Studies released a study suggesting that 26 African states are "fragile".
The Central African Republic is at the extreme end of that category. Christian and Muslim militias have left it with few of the attributes of a state. A huge international rescue operation is under way — the AU hosted a pledging conference to raise its $409m budget for peacekeeping in the Central African Republic this year.
The promises reached three-quarters of that amount, but will they be honoured? A senior European diplomat said little more than 10% of the pledges at the first such African-led appeal — a year ago and for Mali — had been disbursed.
The eruption six weeks ago of civil war in South Sudan, the world’s youngest state, has already taken a heavy toll with up to 10,000 killed and as many as 800,000 forced to flee their homes.
The financial burden of restoring peace will be immense if other neighbouring countries follow Uganda’s example and enter the battleground to defend or advance their interests.
Such conflicts are not in the script of Africa Rising, a feel-good narrative of economic boom based on resource exports and giant infrastructure projects. A mini-summit in Addis of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development left no doubt that much of the continental economy is transforming for the better.
But will political reform keep pace and trim the expansive powers of the majority of African presidencies?
In the AU itself, the rotating presidency passed last week to Mauritania’s President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz who took power in a military coup as recently as 2008. The AU’s next summit in June will be hosted in oil-rich Equatorial Guinea by Teodoro Obiang Nguema, Africa’s longest-serving president. He has brooked no opposition since he took over in a coup in 1979 but he was welcomed with open arms in Addis last week as the 34th member of the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM).
The summit lent credibility to fears that the APRM’s own internal governance is below par by saying it had to be strengthened.
Ethiopia’s prime minister, Hailemariam Desalegn, the summit host and the AU’s outgoing chairman, was blunt about the role of foreign donors, even though they will finance 60% of the AU’s total 2014 budget of nearly $300m.
"We need no hectoring from outside to do what we want to do," Mr Desalegn said.
Nevertheless, some skilled diplomacy was on display. Two of the biggest divides between African and donor governments were skirted. There was no debate about the anti-homosexual campaigns in Nigeria and Uganda and no salt was publicly rubbed into the wounds left by last year’s AU and Kenyan-led attack on the International Criminal Court.
When either of those issues comes up, emotions start running high. For now, all sides want to avoid that.
Source. The Business Day
There was a striking exception and, appropriately, the reason was the late Nelson Mandela. His memory invoked the loudest applause when the plenary hall at the AU’s headquarters in Addis Ababa was named after him at Thursday’s opening ceremony.
The next day, shortly before the summit closed, Mali’s new president briefly lost his composure while he was paying tribute to the great man.
"I am sorry, Madiba," Ibrahim Boubacar Keita said, dabbing his eyes. "But it is human, I am human," he went on, apologising for his tears.
Mali has teetered on the edge very recently, pushed there by a combination of dismal leadership, a coup, corruption and the violent opportunism of Islamic extremists. The home of one of Africa’s great civilisations was rescued from the brink, thanks to French and African military intervention and generous international funding for a return to democracy. Mr Keita won last year’s elections and his emotional debut at the AU’s podium was an occasion for collective satisfaction.
Little else at the summit was clear-cut, although optimists claimed progress in the AU’s declared drive to bring an end to the financial, military and even psychological dependency of many of its 54 member states on wealthy outsiders.
A history of dithering and division over the creation of a standby military force, able to jump into action to nip conflicts in the bud, was papered over. Instead, South Africa led the case for a stop-gap African Capacity for Immediate Response to Crises, with a dozen states volunteering to join the vanguard.
But uncomfortable questions remain. Why did Africa’s brooding giant, Nigeria, decline to sign up?
Where is the proof that African governments are ready to start replacing European, North American and Asian ones, paying much more to enforce and keep the peace in conflict countries?
The price will be high but the reward will be an unambiguous message to the world that the continent is solving its problems. The need is blatant: just before the summit, the Pretoria-based Institute for Security Studies released a study suggesting that 26 African states are "fragile".
The Central African Republic is at the extreme end of that category. Christian and Muslim militias have left it with few of the attributes of a state. A huge international rescue operation is under way — the AU hosted a pledging conference to raise its $409m budget for peacekeeping in the Central African Republic this year.
The promises reached three-quarters of that amount, but will they be honoured? A senior European diplomat said little more than 10% of the pledges at the first such African-led appeal — a year ago and for Mali — had been disbursed.
The eruption six weeks ago of civil war in South Sudan, the world’s youngest state, has already taken a heavy toll with up to 10,000 killed and as many as 800,000 forced to flee their homes.
The financial burden of restoring peace will be immense if other neighbouring countries follow Uganda’s example and enter the battleground to defend or advance their interests.
Such conflicts are not in the script of Africa Rising, a feel-good narrative of economic boom based on resource exports and giant infrastructure projects. A mini-summit in Addis of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development left no doubt that much of the continental economy is transforming for the better.
But will political reform keep pace and trim the expansive powers of the majority of African presidencies?
In the AU itself, the rotating presidency passed last week to Mauritania’s President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz who took power in a military coup as recently as 2008. The AU’s next summit in June will be hosted in oil-rich Equatorial Guinea by Teodoro Obiang Nguema, Africa’s longest-serving president. He has brooked no opposition since he took over in a coup in 1979 but he was welcomed with open arms in Addis last week as the 34th member of the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM).
The summit lent credibility to fears that the APRM’s own internal governance is below par by saying it had to be strengthened.
Ethiopia’s prime minister, Hailemariam Desalegn, the summit host and the AU’s outgoing chairman, was blunt about the role of foreign donors, even though they will finance 60% of the AU’s total 2014 budget of nearly $300m.
"We need no hectoring from outside to do what we want to do," Mr Desalegn said.
Nevertheless, some skilled diplomacy was on display. Two of the biggest divides between African and donor governments were skirted. There was no debate about the anti-homosexual campaigns in Nigeria and Uganda and no salt was publicly rubbed into the wounds left by last year’s AU and Kenyan-led attack on the International Criminal Court.
When either of those issues comes up, emotions start running high. For now, all sides want to avoid that.
Source. The Business Day
No comments:
Post a Comment