United States of Africa Coming Soon?

By Terrence McKeegan, J.D. | March 14, 2011

Today, the African Union issued a press release heralding the “Transformation of the AU Commission into an Authority”.

So what does this mean?

The quick backstory. For many years Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi had floated the idea of a pan-African institution to compete with the US and Europe, to be called the “United States of Africa”. The idea actually picked up intermittent mainstream news coverage in the past few years.

In 2009, Qaddafi upon his election as Chairperson of the African Union, Qaddafi stated, “I shall continue to insist that our sovereign countries work to achieve the United States of Africa.”

Ironically, just as Qaddafi has attained the status of international pariah, his idea has taken an enormous leap forward within the AU.

From the press release:

In July 2009, in Sirte, Libya, the AU Assembly adopted a decision on the modalities of the Transformation of the AUC into an Authority.
The Authority shall exercise its functions on the basis of the principle of subsidiary with regards to Member States and Regional Economic Communities (REC’s). It shall have competence in continent-wide poverty reduction, free movement of persons and goods, peace and security, coordination of common defence policy of the continent as well as coordination of foreign policy of the continent among others.

Read the entire press release here.

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