Imagine an Africa with minimal political unrest, but more free movement of people and goods

The recently concluded extraordinary Heads of State and Government summit in Addis put the icing on the cake by adopting key reforms, mainly aimed at making the body more efficient and self-reliant to deliver better to the African people.

Among the landmark achievements by the Summit was the adoption of a raft of resolutions with regards to financing the African Union and also saw the launch of the AU Peace Fund.

The summit also resolved to realign the Commission, to make it more lean and efficient, especially by ensuring meritocracy prevails over politics in as regards to selection of commissioners.

The commission will also, going forward, work closely with other regional blocs within the continent to mitigate duplication of projects.

However, what is probably the most crucial resolution to be adopted by this summit is proposing sanctions on member states that default on membership dues.

In fact, the summit resolved that, member states who will default on their contributions for two years will be excluded from participating in AU activities, including general assembly.

This is probably the resolution that will oil the implementation of the others, since, as rightly established; it is lack of self-reliance of the body that has rendered it ineffective, right from the days of the Organization of African Unity, to the rebranded African Union.

In January 2016, President Paul Kagame was entrusted by his counterparts from across the continent to lead the daunting task of suggesting reforms to the pan-African body with view to boost its effectiveness.

He would shortly after select a group of 10 eminent Africans from diverse fields with whom he worked to come up with the blueprint that would guide those reforms.

Since taking over the helm, the president and his team have made significant progress where structural changes and the rationalization of working methods have been advanced.

Financial autonomy

Achieving financial autonomy for the AU is coming to fruition at a slow but promising pace especially through the application of 0.2 per cent levy on eligible imports by all member states which in the end will be used to fund commission’s activities.

If well executed, the levy will increase AU average annual budget to USD 1.2 billion from its current USD $782 million whose 74 per cent comes from donors.

This means that if all member states implement 0.2 per cent levy, the commission will be well in excess of at least USD 400 million operating budget every fiscal year.

This will certainly see the commission living its dream of being financially autonomous.

Mitigating conflicts

For far too long, Africans have been victims of lack of swift response to conflicts afflicting them which has led to disastrous consequences.

Under the current arrangement for example, dispatching of a UN peacekeeping force requires a rigorous and highly bureaucratic process that at times, by the time boots touch the ground, irreversible damage is already done.

The people of Rwanda learnt the hard way when even the thin force on ground, simply packed up and left them at their most vulnerable and the consequence was the death of over a million people in the Genocide against the Tutsi.

I am not aware of such deployment that took at least less than three months, not unless those who are willing to deploy have particular interests and, for some reason willing not to adhere to these processes.

This is before divisions among major players on the UN Security Council make a consensus on crises even harder.

Now imagine the damage that any conflict can cause in ninety days. In three months, a rebellion can easily overrun the sitting government and take over a country.

In the same number of days, a deadly outbreak can sweep off a population of the entire province if not well contained ahead of time.  These are the kind of shortfalls that the AU reforms are here to address.

Although the reforms, especially under the peace and security cluster, focus more on conflict prevention and mediation than acting when conflict is in full swing, at least we can be confident that even when a conflict escalates, the Commission, under the Peace Fund, has enough logistical and personnel capabilities to salvage the situation in timely manner.

Emerging threats

Focusing on prevention than intervention is a noble idea.

Of late, the African conflict landscape has changed: new threats, especially from transnational jihadist and criminal networks, aggravate more traditional forms of conflict making the geopolitical climate even harder to navigate.

Elections have become a major cause for political crisis and violence, meaning that early warnings are detected from afar, it was paramount for reforms to focus more on mediation and prevention than intervention.

If this is well implemented, it will positively impact the progress of the African continent which largely has been hampered by political unrest.

Although the continental conflict landscape has evolved since the introduction of African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) in the year 2000, the Peace Fund will help address such emerging challenges.

Otherwise, there has never been shortage of ideas within Africa about how to create prosperity for the peoples, and actually, there is huge potential.

In fact, AU has previously introduced several resounding reform initiatives but they eventually foundered because of a lack or poor implementation.

For current reforms to bear significant impact, member states need to put their act together never like before, especially on honoring their financial obligations.

It’s the only way the body will foot its own bills and find solutions to the existing problems.

A recent research by the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) on integration of African continent dubbed “Lions on the move: Realizing the potential of African economies” finds a huge economic and business opportunity within Africa.

The report found that household spending in Africa is expected to grow from $1.4 trillion in 2015 to $2.1 trillion in 2025. Spending by businesses is expected to grow from $2.6 trillion to $3.5 trillion in the same period.

The research also found that Africa could double its manufacturing output from $500 billion today to $930 billion in 2025.

Such numbers show a great future of our continent even before AU moves to full implementation of these reforms.

Now, imagine the day African businessmen will be able to criss-cross the continent using an AU passport, imagine the day the union will sense an emerging conflict between country A and B, both countries will be summoned by the AU Chairperson who will then instruct them to stop, failure to which, he will move on to deploy a regional brigade to prevent that conflict from happening.

Making Africa great is doable and possible. Maybe not “Great Again” but just “Great.”