AU is not 15 but 54 years old!

By: Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.


The idea of the African Union’s having been around for a diddly 15 years is a myth that I have yet to get used to. And it is one that I may never be able to fully come to terms with, if only because it is a myth quixotically championed by the late Libyan dictator, Col. Muammar El-Gaddhafy, that will continue to be recognized in the history books for the veritable myth that it surely is – the real African Union, originally called the Organization of African Unity (OAU), will be 54 years old come May 25, 2017, if I am not calendrically challenged (See “AU Summit: ‘Let’s Leave Better Legacy’ – Akufo-Addo” Classfmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 1/31/17).

We must be bold and honest enough to confront the fact that as an institution, the so-called African Union (AU) has yet to move beyond the ceremonial stages into an organic socioeconomic and political force to reckon with. And so I was not the least bit amused to learn that the 2017 theme of the AU is “Harnessing the Democratic Dividend Through Investments in the Youth.” Needless to say, this is a laudable theme, in view of the fact that our youth are the most neglected demographic group on the continent. In Ghana, for example, we are confronted with a youthful unemployment rate in excess of 50-percent. And it is within the pictorial context of this utterly disturbing trend of abjectly poor, and for the most part, inexcusably irresponsible leadership that I found the awarding of former President John Dramani Mahama the title of “African Leader of the Year” by, I suppose, some nondescript civil society organization to be nothing short of downright preposterous.

I also find this trite cliché of “leaving a better legacy to posterity than that which was bequeathed us by the previous generations” to be rather risible. For one has to be clinically blind not to fully appreciate the fact that as a people and a continent, we have been in a regressive free fall for at least two generations now and still counting. If we were to use the present state and condition of our youth, all across the African continent, as the “measure of our history,” as admonished by Ghana’s President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo at the 28th Ordinary Session of the Assembly of the African Union in Addis Ababa, then I am afraid we would still be stuck in our pre-history mode. The fact of the matter is that the average African leader today has absolutely no clue, besides lining his pocket and those of his cronies with the people’s money, how to productively and effectively move the destiny of his people into the twenty-first century.

I also don’t see any “landmark” achievement on the part of the African leaders who attended the AU’s 28 Ordinary Session entailed in the mere histrionic gesture of arriving at purportedly “far-reaching decisions.” It goes without saying that we have been through this pontifical ideational grandstanding before, not the least of which was the 1963 foundational or seminal confabulation of the Organization of African Unity. And if experience has anything worthwhile to teach the youth of today, this hifalutin rhetoric of progressive policy-setting, too, shall soon become prime stuff for the stale and yellowed history books no one cares to read anymore.

Indeed, anytime I hear the names of such patently illusive institutional establishments as the African Union Commission, I actually think I am hearing about the “Omissions” of the African Union. I mean, when we have to quote jaded and ossified nonagenarian dictators like Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe to underscore the dire need for progressive leadership, then one ought to appreciate why I continue to envisage the AU as the greatest postcolonial hoax to have been sprung on African leaders. Of course, I also acutely recognize the fact that, by and large, our leaders don’t seem to know any better. Which is not to say that we ought not to try, especially when one has venerable, albeit peerless, dictators and political revisionists as Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame preparing institutional reform proposals for the rest of the AU’s club members.

By: Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
E-mail: [email protected]

*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs