Two decades ago, one US undergraduate international relations textbook did not even mention the AU in its index. Today, we have the yearbook on the AU in its fifth edition. This welcome addition to annual scholarship fills the gap left for two decades by the demise of the annual Africa Contemporary Record.
This yearbook makes explicit that it is not an official yearbook of, but a scholarly yearbook on, the African Union. It brings together scholars who have previously published on aspects of the African Union and are sometimes long-standing consultants, for the AU, so there is an intimacy about their writing and its subject. (p.3) As inevitable in books of this nature, it starts with a glossary, ever-expanding annually with institutional multiplication, and other events.
The Yearbook is well structured. Part 1, chapter 2, is the world as seen from Addis. Global dynamics is now represented by 134 diplomatic missions in Addis Ababa. The AU itself cannot be a UN member as only individual states, not regional organisations, may belong. (p.17) Perhaps, the time is now overdue to revisit that prohibition? Time and again, this book’s authors sound warnings against the futility of ‘a pan-Africanism lost in rhetoric and spectacular gestures unable to translate into policy’ (p.20).
One frequent weakness found in books like this is that while the authors will write about successes, they will only write of ‘challenges’, but never failures. This book does grasp the nettle when it confronts the AU’s failures to stop depending on foreign donors, euphemised as ‘partners’. One of the facts that the AU rarely reveals are the names of which states it has imposed cautionary sanctions or comprehensive sanctions. (p.38) These refer not to an economic blockade as the US Government frequently resorts to but to denying the states who fail to pay their annual membership fees the right to vote in or speak in AU proceedings.
Chapter 4 surveys the state of the union. Here, the key fact is that 93% of AU decisions made during the past three years remain unimplemented. (p.42). This is certainly unchanged from previous years and decades. Perhaps the most serious of these paper decisions never implemented might be the 2014 Protocol on the Amendment to the Protocol on the statute of the African Court of Justice and Human Rights. Not one government has ratified this – obviously because it empowers the court to sentence to imprisonment tyrants who violate human rights at scale. In fairness, the USA has also found it politically impossible to support the statutes of the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice.
Another bit of truth-telling is the observation that the Pan-African Parliament ‘has been beset by problems for a while’. (p.121) When the Treaty of Abuja was drafted, the PAP was clearly considered as the most difficult to empower, for it was scheduled to be founded only during the last phase of the Treaty’s schedule. In fact, President Mbeki surprised everyone by launching it in the early 2000s. Its fate was to become discredited by elitist squabbles amongst its bureaucrats. Hopefully, it can regain credibility in the near future.
Chapter 10 on Infrastructure and Energy covers a vital terrain. It also covers one rare bit of realism with regard to an AU slogan. While Dr. Zuma spoke of high-speed railways running between Cape Town and Cairo, the reality is that not one of the railways currently being constructed or repaired on our continent is a ‘high-speed’ railway. Indeed, with the narrow Cape gauge and the still narrower East African gauge, the railways over one-third of our continent would have to be entirely relaid in order to safely convey high-speed trains. Here, the AU has realistically and formally removed the phrase ‘high speed’ from the commitment to a continental railway network running between Cape Town and Cairo. (p.146)
The AU needs lots more similar realism – for example about the ‘silencing the guns in Africa by 2000’, slogan, then by 2005, now by 2063. Another terrain of broken promises is the eighteen states that have failed to so far sign ‘the solemn commitment to join the Single African Air Transport Market’ – at least thirty-seven states have joined that.
The aim to reach an integrated continental power grid is excellent – but clearly cannot be done by 2030. Indeed, merely the Grand Inga power plant alone, with its vital west coast power corridor and central power corridor has been postponed repeatedly for two decades.
Chapter 11 on Peace and Security summarises the numerous civil wars and rebellions currently underway, and the forgotten OAU resolution against mercenarism in Africa.
The book’s part 3 is devoted to solid book reviews and is followed by appendices and an index. All told, this book is a must for every scholarly library and course reading on the AU. Highly recommended to all librarians.
