The United States of Africa?

Support for deeper political integration at the recent African Union heads of state summit -- especially from Libyan leader Muammar al-Qadhafi -- has revived discussion of a 'United States of Africa'.  The notion has a long history: Africa's first independent president, Kwame Nkumrah of Ghana, championed it.  Nkumrah's current successor, President John Kufuor, also lent support to calls for a political union.

However, many serious obstacles remain to such a political union -- not least the lack of widespread support from African leaders.  While Senegal's President Abdoulaye Wade enthusiastically supported the idea, even offering to join an immediate union which other states could later join, most leaders expressed only tepid support.  A gradualist framework emerged from the summit, which was fundamentally in line with longstanding plans for African economic and political integration.  South African President Thabo Mbeki was at the forefront of leaders pushing for the slow approach.

Resistance to enhanced political union has to do with more than questions over sovereignty: the continent's countries are already grouped into myriad regional economic organisations with overlapping memberships and, in some cases, conflicting agendas.  After decades of discussions, the limited progress on economic integration in all but a handful of countries -- found mainly in the Southern African Customs Union and the East African Community -- reveals the gulf between reality and the rhetoric espoused at the AU summit.  Even the continent's existing pan-African institution, the African Union itself, is woefully underfunded: a recent audit revealed that only seven of 53 members were up to date with their dues.  A United States of Africa remains, at best, a distant proposition.