By Mazhun Idris
The diamond jubilee of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), now known as the African Union, is probably as befitting an occasion as any to question why a continent celebrating 60 years of political and socio-economic cooperation under a single entity has failed to escape disparaging narratives such as "Africa is a continent without leadership".
May 25 is Africa Day, commemorating the establishment of the OAU on this day in 1963 — a journey that has seen this organisation grow rapidly with its members working together to surmount common challenges and achieve collective goals.
While the African Union stands testimony to progress, all the backsliding about the continent being a lumbering behemoth mostly boils down to who shapes the narrative.
Prof Carlos Lopes, a former executive secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, is among those who challenge these endemic perceptions, saying many of the things being said about Africa do not reflect the reality of the continent.
Lopes recognises a lot of the power dynamics around repeated negative narratives about Africa.
He gives the example of the exaggerated contributions of external aid to Africa, which he says constitutes only a little portion of development funding in the continent, compared to foreign and internal investments as well as remittances by diaspora.
He sees foreign aid being amplified more despite the ongoing downsizing of such funding.
Kicking out colonialism
According to Prof Lopes, Africa should be "defensive" in relation to global developments.
"Defensive in the sense that we have to be better equipped, exercise urgency, and make sure that Africa is capable of occupying the role that it should in the world," he tells TRT Afrika.
The pan-African organisation that came to be known as the OAU was created exactly six decades ago in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to achieve precisely this objective.
Governments of 32 African nations became signatories to the alliance, whose vision was to build "an integrated, prosperous, and peaceful Africa, driven by its own citizens and representing a dynamic force in the global arena''.
The one dream that all founding members of the OAU bought into was a united Africa at peace with itself.
As a continent then besieged by Western colonial rule, the immediate mission of the organisation was to fight for the independence of its member states even as they sought to build political and economic integration of the continent.
As most of the African states achieved independence through the 1960s, the OAU's mission shifted towards fighting Apartheid in southern Africa, which was eventually achieved in the 1990s.
In 2002, the OUA officially became the African Union following a decision by African leaders in 1999 to create a new continental body to build on the work done so far.
According to the African Union, the decision to relaunch the pan-African organisation was taken in order "to realise Africa’s potential".
There was a consensus among the continent's leaders on "a need to refocus attention from the fight for decolonisation and ridding the continent of apartheid, which had been the focus of the OAU, towards increased cooperation and integration of African states to drive Africa’s growth and economic development".
The African Union strives in pursuing Africa-wide socio-economic and political stability alongside security and advancing the African identity.
"We work toward addressing conflicts, from early warning systems, to management of the conflict, and also resolution. We also focus on post-conflict reconstruction," the head of the African Union's Peace and Security Council, Neema Chusi, tells TRT Afrika.
Chusi's office works on conflict transformation, which is a rigorous task that requires hands-on attention to social, political, and economic developments around the continent in order to provide early warning indicators of conflicts.
"We also support those countries in transition, most of them political transition, and peacekeeping operations in the continent," Chusi says.
The organisation's peace operations in parts of Africa include the African Union Transition Mission in Somalia (ATMIS), "a multi-dimensional mission (military, police and civilian), authorised by the African Union and mandated by the United Nations Security Council".
It started in April 2022, succeeding the African Union Mission to Somalia that had the approval of the United Nations.
African vibrancy at work
Moussa Faki Mahamat, chairperson of the African Union Commission, once said that ATMIS was meant to build on "the significant gains over the past 15 years in support of the emergence of a capable Somali National Army, a professional Somali Police Force and Federal institutions".
In the years that followed the founding of the OAU, especially the post-colonial period after 1963, many African countries came to be led mainly by young revolutionary leaders who were full of the vigour of Pan-Africanism and social renaissance.
This vibrancy of African continental leadership is deemed to have drastically faded over the years.
Africa needs such kind of young and vibrant leadership now more than ever, says Ambassador Tibor P. Nagy, a former assistant secretary of the Bureau of African Affairs in the US State Department, and also ex-American ambassador to Ethiopia.
Nagy is convinced that although Africa still needs to tackle leadership challenges, it has the potential to be a force to reckon with.
"Africa has done really well in that it surmounted a horrendous colonial history. There is a real chance that Africa can become the continent of the 21st century," he tells TRT Afrika.
Africa is the world's second most populous continent with a headcount of more than 1.4 billion, mainly young people.
This, coupled with ample natural resources – both tapped and untapped — across every part of the continent make it a force multiplier in terms of sheer potential.
Nagy says African countries need to get young people more involved in leadership roles and the development of the continent, something that the African Union says it is already focused on.
"I can tell you that youth are well covered in the African Union's scheme of things right now. We have what is called the Youth Volunteer Programme, which brings together young people from across the continent. They are being trained by the organisation and then deployed in one of the organs or projects," explains Peace and Security Council head Chusi.
"The programme has brought a lot of youth into the African Union system. If you come to the African Union now and just take a walk, you will definitely meet more youth than old people," she adds.
Both Nagy and Chusi believe that African youth have great dynamism, energy, and entrepreneurship zeal, all of which are crucial to realising the continent's greater development goals.
