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A Supranational African State Is Not A Good Idea__________________________________By: Getachew MequanentJuly 7,2007 I used to observe some campus-based Pan-African and Pan-Arab intellectual and political activism. Both of these ideologies could have been important: Pan-Africanism truly served to galvanize support for liberation struggles in the 1950s and 1960s, while Pan-Arabism cultivated a collective post-colonial identity in the Middle East including opposition to Israel. However, by mid-1990s, Pan-African and Pan-Arab sentiments had mostly died away. Saddam Hussein of Iraq invaded Kuwaiti and most of the countries in the Middle East allied with America to expel him, hence, this ended Arab nationalism. The current civil and communal conflicts in this region are also so sickening that one would wonder how Gamal Abdul-Nasser (the architect of Arab nationalism) would feel if he were alive today. In Africa, there were wide spread bloody communal and ethnic conflicts. The disintegration of Somalia was a big set back for the study of “nation building”. The conventional wisdom was that nation building in Africa had been extremely difficult mainly because colonial powers had created artificial states by dividing and incorporating different ethnic groups. But, how would one explain when Somalia - a country consisting of a single ethnic group – disintegrated? The Rwandan genocide and the brutality of civil wars in Central and West Africa were so traumatic that nobody wanted to talk about them. As Africans seemingly failed to live together peacefully, the hope of Pan-African unity faded away. Instead, for the first time serious attention was paid to state capacity and governance issues. It became clear that nation states were irrelevant unless they could demonstrate to Africans the benefits of citizenship, such as peace and security, protection of human rights and delivery of public services. And so we saw donor-guided state reform projects intended to make African states more responsive to citizens’ needs. While there are well performing states today (including the Ethiopian state), many African states still remain less effective. Nonetheless, few people - mostly among intellectuals in the African Diaspora - continued to propagate the idea of Pan-African unity. On the diplomatic front, Colonel Maumar Gaddafi should be credited for his tireless effort to champion the cause of Pan-Africanism. To be sure, Gaddafi always sees himself as a revolutionary and to some extent this can be true. Libyan society is one of the most secular and egalitarian societies in the developing world. Gaddafi used the income from oil revenues to invest in social programs and infrastructure including a sophisticated network of irrigation that has turned the Sahara desert into productive agricultural land. And, whereas his Arab League colleagues are often irritated by his radicalism and provocative behavior (including his female bodyguards), Gaddafi has no difficulty of finding fans in the African continent, thanks to the prevalence of wide spread dissatisfaction with Western-prescribed neo-liberal models of development. On the other hand, Gaddafi often appears to be more concerned with marketing his ideology rather than paying attention to the real needs of the African people. His silence on the long and bloody crisis in Darfur, Sudan – just as other Arab leaders have done – is good evidence. The problem with some popular ideas like Pan-Africanism is that they are promoted by people who have little practical experience. I am sure that leaders from Nigeria, Ethiopia, Liberia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda or other countries have serious reservations on the proposal to create an African supranational state, because they have first-hand experiences of the challenges of governing national societies that consist of diverse and competing ethnic groups. The second source of inspiration for the revival of the Pan-Africanist
cause could be the success of the European Union (EU). EU now has 27 members
whose citizens share common citizenship and can live and work anywhere
in member countries. It has a commission (equivalent of a public service
organization with 23,000 employees), parliament, council and court of
justice and other institutions such as banks, auditors and policy committees.
These institutional resources, coupled with stable and strong member states
as well as decades of experience with the European Common Market (which
was created in 1957), help EU to function well. Yet, it is ridiculous
to draw a parallel between Africa and Europe. Compared to the vast and
diverse African geography, Europe is smaller in size (perhaps no more
than the size of Ethiopia and Sudan combined). Moreover, the people of
Europe have a long history of co-existence - consider the Austro-Hungarian
Empire (now central Europe) or the ancient Roman empire - as well as a
long history of trade, diplomacy and cultural exchanges. In contrast,
Africa has diverse peoples with distinctive ethnic, linguistic, religious
and cultural identities and the majority of them were brought together
under what are often called artificial states created by European imperialists.
Before Africans can be herded, organized and governed by a supranational
state, they must know each other and appreciate and tolerate diversity. There are other practical issues that make the idea of union of African states unrealistic. Consider inter-state tensions across the continent. How would states that have adversarial relations work together? The UN system has been rendered ineffective because of the existence of antagonistic relations among member states. There are also competing interests represented by different groups like the African group, Asian group, Latin American group, EU group, OECD (Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development) group, coffee growers group, oil producers group, Pacific RIM group, NATO group, Southern group, Northern group, dictators group, democrats group, the list can go on, and all these groups spend time and resources to plan and strategize on how to play political games instead of implementing the UN mandate. The same thing can happen if African states with little commonalities are brought together to form a supranational state. To conclude, African leaders should focus their attention on poverty eradication, instead of spending time and resources on building a supranational state. In fact, Africa remains the only place in the world where outsiders determine the future. There is no doubt that current African leaders, most notably Meles Zenawi, Thabo Mbekki, Yoweri Museveni, Olusgun Obasanjo and others, have fought hard to help Africa earn some respect from bilateral and multilateral donor agencies including negotiating some flexibility on how donors attach conditions to their aid allocation modalities. NEPAD has identified broad continental development agendas which have been further elaborated by the work of the Commission for Africa. The challenge for African leaders is to stay committed to supporting the NEPAD agendas. The Commission for Africa has as target 2015 to implement its plan that includes regional economic integration. The results (by 2015) will tell us whether Africans are ready to work together and therefore whether a supranational state is desirable and indeed feasible.
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