Why Africa’s claim for unity remains elusive after more than five decades of independence

Pan-African unity has faced considerable challenges since African countries attained ‘flag’ independence more than fifty years ago from colonialism. The dream of Pan-African unity that was mooted by Pan-Africanists like Kwame Nkrumah, Mwalimu Julius Nyerere and other prominent pioneers like W.E.B Dubois, has not been realised. Part of the reasons for the failure of the Pan-African unity can be traced from the very nature of the creation of the African nation-states from colonialism. Other reasons can be traced from the external forces that have confronted the independent African states and the onslaught of globalisation. Despite the disappointments, there continues to be attempts through continental initiatives to bring about African unity first through the Organisation of African unity (OAU) and the current African Union (AU). Pan-African unity, according to Prof. Ali Mazrui, has also been part of the wider attempt by Africans to struggle against dependency imposed upon the continent by its historical experience. The need for unity, cooperation and integration of Africa has long been on the lips of the mentioned African visionaries and Pan-Africanists like George Padmore, W.E.B Dubois, including the indefatigable Marcus Garvey. The call for African pan-African unity was further re-echoed by African nationalists and leaders like Obafemi Owolowo, Julius Nyerere, Ahmed Sekou Toure, Haile Selaise and Kwameh Nkrumah. It should be recalled that in his book, Nkrumah observed, “Salvation for Africa lies in unity…for in unity lies strength and I see it, African states must unite or sell themselves out to imperialist and colonialist exploiters for a mess of pottage or disintegrate individually.”Therefore, it should be noted that the clamour for integration in Africa is not merely a phenomenon of the 21st Century. In fact, the challenges of globalisation and marginalisation of Africa merely rekindled the call and need for integration. This is reflected in what the former United Nations Secretary General, Kofi Annan, said at the 9th Summit of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) in Kampala on 8th June 2004: “The continent continues to face numerous daunting developmental challenges. Economic growth is still far below what is needed to meet the Millennium Development Goal of reducing poverty by half by the year 2015. Adult literacy for the majority of sub-Saharan Africa stands well below the developing country average. In addition, the rising incidences of HIV/AIDS are dramatically reducing life expectancy. Effective regional integration has a major role to play in helping African countries address these and other common concerns.” What this suggests is that regional integration is indispensable for Africa to achieve meaningful socio-economic growth and development. This is the fundamental challenge before the African Union (AU). Incidentally, the aim of the AU is to, “bring the deepest possible integration of the continent socially, economically, militarily, culturally and politically.” The objective as contained in Article 3 (c) of the constitutive Act is to “accelerate the political and socio-political and economic integration of the continent.”In achieving the foregoing objective, the AU has considerable challenges and problems to contend. The gloomy picture that the challenges and problems paint should provide a candid portrayal of Africa as a continent that has been marginalised. One of the key challenges of Africa is how to promote inter and intra African trade. A myriad of factors have contributed to the low volume of trade, usually recorded by African states in their trade with one another. Firstly is the fact that “most countries in Africa produce primary products for which there is no demand elsewhere in Africa.” Secondly is that for many African countries “few commodities often make up the bulk of exports to the rest of the continent.” For instance, in Angola alone, petroleum and petroleum products account for more than 90 percent of its export to other African countries whereas in the Seychelles fresh fish constitutes nearly 98 percent of such exports. Three West African countries are still “grappling to undo a legacy dominated by trade with their former colonial rulers rather than with each other.” For example, despite the fact that Senegal surrounds Gambia, trade between the two neighbours is negligible. Senegal’s biggest trading partner is France, while Gambia trades extensively with the UK. Gumisai Mutume is of the view that due to “hindrances to trade within Africa, exports from Tunisia and Cameroon often find their way to French warehouses before being redirected to each other’s market shelves”.Another serious challenge the AU has to contend with in its effort to promote integration in Africa is the low level or inadequate infrastructure, especially transport and communications within the continent. With regard to communications, “Africa has the lowest telephone density in the world yet the highest telephone charges, and three times the rate of faults per line as in other developing regions.” According to a World Bank report, “For every 100 people in Africa, there are 1.2 telephone lines—the lowest rate in the world.” The report further adds that: “Telephone calls between African countries can be 50—100 times more expensive than they are within North America.”On transportation, the World Bank report notes that, “freight costs for imports to landlocked African countries are more than twice as high as in Asia.” While the report is right, it is worrisome, particularly when one considers the fact that “to ship a car from Tokyo, Japan, to Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire costs $1,500, while shipping the same car from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to Abidjan costs up to $5,000.” Moreover, in order to travel from one African country to another “usually meant first using a route via Geneva or Paris.” As Ernest Harsch points out: “African businessmen frequently need to wait 6 to 8 weeks to get visas to visit other African countries while citizens of the UK or France can travel to many African countries and obtain visa on arrival.” Incidentally, visas to French West African countries are given by the French Embassies, in Africa, on behalf of their former colonies. If Burkina Faso has no embassy in Nairobi, the visa to that country will be issued by the French embassy in Nairobi and not High Commission of Ghana or say Nigeria, both of which are members of the Economic Commission for West African States (ECOWAS) and are neighbours! Professor Adebayo Adedeji, a leading voice on regional integration and former Executive Secretary, United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), in an interview with Africa Recovery had this to say, “The environment for regional integration…has been absent in Africa.” He laments the “stagnant, declining economies” of African states and asked rhetorically: “If you can’t provide enough transport facilities at home, how can you be thinking of West African or Pan-African transport facilities?” This is indeed a challenge at the doorstep of the African Union. Regional integration efforts have also not been successful in Africa because “gains and drawbacks are unavoidably and unequally distributed between member countries, and no satisfactory mechanism for compensation has yet been devised.” According to Ernest Harsch, the major obstacle to successful regional integration has been the great diversity in African countries’ sizes, national resources, level of development and connections to global markets. Tiny Benin does not have the same economic interests as its giant oil-rich neighbour, Nigeria. South Africa and Malawi do not experience the costs and benefits of regional trade arrangements in the same way.Besides, the benefits from integration are only somewhat accruable in the end whereas its cost has to be met in the short term by members who obviously have more than enough social, political and economic problems to cope with at home. According to Professor Adedeji, “there are states that can’t even pay the salaries of their civil servants. How can you expect them to take out their non-available resources to pay contributions to regional organisations?” That’s an interesting point that we cannot afford to ignore. Another serious challenge confronting the African Union is how to make African governments incorporate regional agreements into national policies. The policies of liberalisation, privatisation and deregulation as well as unsound packages of macro-economic policies imposed through structural adjustment conditionality or programmes by the IMF and the World Bank, which have now been institutionalised within the WTO through rules, agreements and procedures, are biased against African countries on one hand and regional integration efforts on the other hand. The programmes, focusing heavily on liberalisation and market mechanisms, are almost exclusively national in scope, as they obliged each African government to negotiate separately with its external financing institutions, without regard to regional considerations.In the meantime, external financing institutions, the donors or development partners, prefer to fund national programmes rather than regional cooperative projects. Professor Muna Ndulo, Director at Institute for African Development (IAD) concurs on this issue. He says: “There is the problem of low priority accorded to the implementation of integration programmes vis-à-vis national ones which are very often supported and financed by influential international institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank. For example, under the structural Adjustment programmes in place in most African countries, domestic considerations take precedence over sub-regional integration pre-occupations.” Besides, the liberalisation imposed by structural adjustment opened the African market to goods coming from the highly industrialised countries, which no African country can compete with. That has led to the de-industrialisation of the African continent as manufacturing industries now account for less than 5 percent of GDP compared to 10 to 15 percent between 1960 and 1975.Hence, according to Professor Adedeji, “how to launch a new process of industrialisation is one of the problems facing the African Union.” In Africa, “overlapping membership of regional economic communities has worked against the overall objective.” The Regional Economic Communities (RECs) advocated by the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), were created as stepping stones to regional integration and now there are 13 RECs covering a range of functions and intentions. Currently, almost all African countries belong to more than one of these RECs, 27 countries belong to two, 18 belong to three and one country belongs to four. In addition to the sub-regional RECs, there are well over 100 other multinational or bilateral groups devoted to fostering cooperation around specific activities, such as telecommunications, aviation, maritime transport, banking, river management, agriculture, energy and others. Two prominent examples in this regard are the Arab League and the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). According to P.O.M. Njemanze, “the membership of the Arab League is working against the economic integration of Africa. This is because the Arab world, which includes African countries north of the Sahara desert, is united in the promotion of the interests of the Arabs worldwide. The interests of the Arab League do not always agree with those of African countries south of the Sahara. The other example worth mentioning is that of OPEC, and as Njemanze observes: “The existence of OPEC as a commodity cartel is working against the economic integration of Africa. This is because its membership, which includes non-African nations has polarised the African continent into OPEC and non-OPEC members. As the allocation of production quotas by OPEC affects the price of crude oil in the world market and the high price of crude oil adversely affects the economies of non-OPEC African countries, the boat of economic integration of Africa is moving against the tide since the prices of crude oil will remain a source of disharmony in relationship between the OPEC and the non-OPEC African countries”. The catalogue of challenges facing Africa include the existence of civil strives and conflicts. The African Journal of International Affairs and Development once noted, “virtually every country in Africa has either a festering or full blown conflict to deal with.” Since wars affect neighbouring countries, what ordinarily begins as a “minor” dispute over power and resources can quickly engulf an entire region. The result of this is; displacement of people (refugees), reduction in the flow of aid and investments, suspension of development projects and a host of other losses. All these hinder regional integration. Furthermore, the lack of sustainable political commitment to put in place well articulated policies and plans has been one of Africa’s major shortcoming, and in the context of African Union, this is an issue that needs to be addressed.

Insight

Why Africa’s claim for unity remains elusive after more than five decades of independence