Organization of African Unity (OAU)

In 1963 the leaders of thirty-two newly independent African states gathered in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to establish the Organization of African Unity (OAU), primarily intended to promote unity and cooperation among African states, uphold self-government and respect for territorial boundaries, and eradicate all forms of colonialism from Africa. From thirty-two member states in 1963, the membership of the organization increased to fifty-three in 1994. With this growing membership also came more achievements, problems, and challenges.

BACKGROUND OF THE OAU

The consciousness and movement for African unity is traceable to the ideas of Pan-Africanism, which originated among African descent in the Diaspora—in the United States, the Caribbean, and Europe. Pan-Africanists, both at the 1945 Manchester Conference in London and the 1958 All Africa People's Conference in Accra, unanimously spoke against the prevailing racism and colonialism. They called on Africans to unite in their fight for liberation. In 1957 Ghana became the first country in sub-Saharan Africa to gain independence. In his independence speech, President Kwame Nkrumah (1909–1972) declared that the independence of Ghana was meaningless unless it leads to the total liberation of the African continent. From 1957 to 1963, Africa's unrelenting struggle for freedom resulted in the liberation of thirty-two African states. However, the continent, as Haile Selassie (1892–1975), then emperor of Ethiopia acknowledged, lacked the mechanism that would enable it to speak with one voice. So, formation of an African organization became a necessity.

Undoubtedly, African leaders agreed to the need for African unity, but were divided on the choice of a unanimous strategy. According to April Gordon and Donald Gordon, the disagreement centered on whether full continental political unity should be established immediately at the founding of the OAU, or whether it should be accomplished progressively through a minimalist or building block approach. These two approaches to African integration were hotly and passionately debated and considered throughout Africa. Two groups emerged. The first group, led by Nkrumah, was known as the Casablanca Group (named after the Moroccan city). Otherwise called the radicals, the Casablanca Group called for a political union of African countries, patterned after the federal model of the United States. Again, it suggested that African development be based on socialist planning. The second group, Monrovia Group (named after the capital of Liberia), was led by Abubakar Tafawa Balewa (1912–1966), prime minister of Nigeria. The group, otherwise known as the conservatives, in contrast, called for the creation of a looser organization and market-driven development. This division threatened to derail the course of continental integration. Nevertheless, the 1963 meeting united the opposing groups.

On May 25, 1963, Nkrumah of Ghana, Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, and Gamal Abdel Nasser (or Gamal Abd al-Nasir) of Egypt (1918–1970), convened a meeting of thirty-two newly independent African countries in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to deliberate on the desired African union. Delegates at the meeting understood that to wipe out all forms of colonialism from Africa, unity was crucial. Thus, the charter establishing OAU was signed on May 25, 1963, with the objectives of eradicating all forms of colonialism from Africa; promote unity and solidarity; coordinate and intensify cooperation and efforts to achieve a better life for the people of Africa; promote international cooperation and undertake collective and joint provision of resources and man power, which would enable Africa to achieve rapid development. The most important objectives that drove the OAU from its inception in 1963 to the economic predicament of the 1980s was the need to protect the fragile sovereignty recently achieved by African states, and to help those still under colonial or racist rule to achieve sovereign independence. In these respects, OAU recorded commendable breakthroughs. From 1963 to 1994, the Coordinating Committee for the Liberation of Africa provided financial and military support to independence movements in Angola, Algeria, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Príncipe, São Tomé, and white minority-ruled South Africa. A total of twenty-one countries were ultimately liberated, with South Africa becoming the fifty-third member on May 23, 1994. Nevertheless, OAU failed to pay equal attention to the issue of economic development.

SHORTCOMINGS OF THE OAU

Even though the OAU effectively pursued the goal of African liberation, it failed to confront the postcolonial challenges of endemic poverty, war, genocides, human rights and environmental disasters, or political instability and failures. The organization provided inadequate answers to these problems, and, as the Tanzanian President, Julius Nyerere (1922–1999) noted, the OAU was basically a talking club of African leaders with no power to back up its resolutions. Under the ruthless dictatorship of Hastings Banda (1898–1997) of Malawi, Emperor Bokassa I (1921–1996) of Central African Republic, Idi Amin (1924–2003) of Uganda, Mobutu Sese Seko (1930–1997) of Zaire, and Sani Abacha (1943–1998) of Nigeria, the OAU was helpless. Except for the courageous step taken by Nyerere to unseat Idi Amin in 1979, the OAU's principle of state sovereignty and nonintervention simply meant that the organization looked the other way while ruthless dictators abused the people and enriched themselves. Civil wars in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, among others, resulted from a struggle for power and allocation of resources. The ensuing division, instability, and uncertainty arrested sustainable development in Africa. Under this circumstance, as author S.K.B Asante noted, African states were not taken seriously by the international community as an important and effective partner in the global economy, and were increasingly swept aside by the intensification of economic globalization.

METAMORPHOSES OF THE OAU

Mindful of the harsh prospect of marginalization, and the ineffectiveness of the OAU in providing the way forward, African leaders, in 1999, convened for an extraordinary session of the OAU in Sirte, Libya. The session discussed ways of repositioning the OAU not only to align with the emerging global, political, and economic developments, but articulate the preparation necessary to promote Africa's social, economic, and political potentials within the context of globalization. With the theme of strengthening OAU capacity to enable it to meet the challenges of the new millennium, the Sirte summit demanded, among other things, for the speedy establishment of all the institutions provided by the treaty establishing the African Economic Community (AEC) in Abuja on June 3, 1991 (called the Abuja Treaty) namely, African Central Bank, the African Monetary Union, the African Court of Justice, and the Pan-African Parliament.

Based on the Sirte Declaration, the Constitutive Act of African Union was adopted by the Assembly of Heads of States and Government of OAU at its thirty-sixth ordinary session in Lome, Togo, on July 11, 2000. Two-thirds of the member states ratified it. Meanwhile, the OAU remained operational for a transitional period of one year following a decision adopted in Lusaka, Zambia, on July 10, 2001. The next year, in Durban, South Africa, the OAU was replaced with the African Union (AU). The inaugural session of the new organization took place immediately at the same venue on July 9 and 10, 2002.

The AU was formed not only to accomplish greater unity and solidarity among African countries, but to ensure the acceleration of the political and socioeconomic integration of the continent. Of course, in the context of globalization, particularly since the 1990s, stronger integration in Africa became a precondition to improve its overall political and economic integration of Africa in the unavoidable world economy. As authors Jeffrey Herbst and Greg Mills rightly stated, AU might be seen as a mere baptismal name, or even a departure from the past disappointments of OAU. It might also be described as an old lady with a new dress, as Theodore T. Hodge noted. But what is remarkable, at any rate, is that AU opens a new chapter in African history when the paradigm of sustainable development is eventually identified and placed at the center of the continent's developmental concerns.

On the whole, efforts at African integration, symbolized in OAU, achieved the mission of ridding the continent of colonialism, but failed to achieve similar results in the social and economic spheres. Since the 1980s as a consequence, the postcolonial economy of Africa remained fragile. Frustrated with the apparent failure to address persistent socioeconomic problems in Africa, the OAU metamorphosed into AU, determined to take advantage of developmental opportunities implicit in the contemporary globalized economy.

see also Nkrumah, Kwame; Nyerere, Julius; Pan-Africanism.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Asante, S.K.B. Regionalism and Africa's Development: Expectations, Reality, and Challenges. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997.

Gordon, April A. and Gordon Donald L. ed. Understanding Contemporary Africa, 3rd ed. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2001.

Herbst, Jeffrey, and Greg Mills. The Future of Africa: A New Order in Sight? Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press for the International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2003.

Maluwa, Tiyanjana. "The Constitutive Act of the African Union and Institution Building in Postcolonial Africa." Leiden Journal of International Law, 16 (2003).

Wolfers, M. Politics in the Organization of African Unity. London: Methuen, 1976.