From the time it was first proposed by Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah to its most recent revival by Libyan leader Muammar Quaddafi, the idea and reality of a United States of Africa has been plagued by colonial and post-colonial conflicts and problemmatics which further make African Unity a dream deferred. Politically speaking, the inauguration of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) in Addis Abba in 1963 signaled a hope that this dream would finally be on the road to reality. However, due to various expressions and manifestations of disunity and neo-colonialism, the OAU never really lived up to its very high expectations.
Now, the African Union (AU), the successor entity to the OAU, has emerged, formed on the model of the European Union. Questions arise as to whether the vehicle of the AU will yield any more of a substantive end result, leading to the ever elusive reality of continental unity for the motherland. Interestingly enough, the European Union has instituted the makings of a political economy that has developed a single currency and appears on the road to political unity, in the form of a United States of Europe. If the EU is successful and the AU follows in step in taking sustantive measures toward real and lasting socio-political and economic unity, what New World will emerge? These and other questions and possibilities, we examine in this new cultures and policy issues forum.
Links:
To visit the website of the African Union, click on the following link: http://www.africa-union.org/
New African magazine, published out of London, covers the African continent from a Pan-Africanist frame of reference: http://www.africasia.com/newafrican/index.php
Also, look at the Africa section on the website of World Press: http://www.worldpress.org/africa.htm
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