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This year’s celebration of Africa Day provides another opportunity to assess how far continental integration has progressed.
Integration would mean a truly united Africa – either a federalist “United States of Africa” or the African Union (AU) exercising binding powers over member states. At present the AU merely serves as a platform for coordinating the interactions of its 55 member states.
Although some progress has been made, more needs to be done to achieve the goal of integration.
Member states need to move beyond paying lip service to unity, and empower critical AU organs. This requires a shift in mentality. States need to appreciate the need to sacrifice some autonomy for common socioeconomic and political gains. Lacklustre commitment to continental integration is connected with Africa’s peripheral position in global dynamics.
In my view, as a researcher of the institutional dynamics of Africa’s integration process, pan-African integration is in a crucial phase. This phase is as important as the creation of the Organisation of African Unity in 1963 and its eventual replacement with the AU 20 years ago.
A pan-African worldview
In a 1969 speech, the then Tanzanian president, Julius Nyerere, captured what the African worldview entails:
We recognise that we are involved in the world and that the world is involved in us. Involvement without understanding, however, can be embarrassing and even dangerous.
A pan-Africanist worldview understands that the continent cannot exist in isolation. However, this must be accompanied by a determination to drive an agenda that enhances pan-African goals.
This position reflects the views of many of Nyerere’s contemporaries, and those who came after him, on how Africa should position itself on the global stage.
Read more - https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337898687_Can_Africa_ever_achieve_continental_sovereignty_in_the_shifting_West-to-East_strategic_landscape_The_geopolitics_of_integration_and_autonomy