OAU's questionable purpose and prospects

By CNN European Political Editor Robin Oakley

LONDON, England (CNN) -- Goodbye talking shop, welcome to another talking shop. That is how many on the African continent are likely to react to this week’s winding up of the Organisation of African Unity and its replacement by a new body calling itself the African Union.

The OAU, founded in 1963, initially played a considerable role in Africa’s politics. It provided both practical resources and political backing for countries like Mozambique and Zimbabwe in their struggle against colonialism and helped to mobilise the battle against the apartheid regime in South Africa.

But the OAU, with its tradition of non-interference in the internal affairs of its 53 member states, has proved of limited use across a continent of constant conflict and widespread government corruption. It has done little to boost Africa’s economies or combat the scourge of AIDS and other infectious diseases.

Although the old criticism that the OAU was a trades union for dictators became less relevant as more African leaders came to be elected its members have not all proved to be beacons of democracy under the OAU umbrella.

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The new body, which will come into being at the end of this week’s OAU conference in Lusaka, Zambia, is loosely modelled on the European Union. It will have an assembly made up of all the heads of state and an executive council drawn from the 53 countries’ ministers. It will have a central bank and a court of justice and aims to work towards a common defence, foreign and communications policy.

Some fear the new African Union will merely create a new bureaucracy and stage more limousine-hopping, posturing summits without achieving anything concrete. They are suspicious of the heavy involvement of Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi in its creation. But there are some good omens too.

The rest of the world is beginning to take more interest in Africa and the reasons for its development lagging so far behind the rest of the world. Among the early visitors to United States' President George W. Bush’s White House were the presidents of Ghana, Mali and Senegal.

Said a White House spokesman: “Those three West African nations are real gems in Africa. They are real success stories. They are democracies and they have implemented economic reforms.”

Africa will be a major beneficiary from further efforts at the forthcoming G8 summit to relieve the economic burdens of the heavily indebted poor countries. And the continent where 25 million are HIV positive or AIDS victims will benefit too from the new drive at the United Nations to combat AIDS, TB and malaria.

Of the 44 countries in sub-Saharan Africa 21 are riven by conflicts which hinder development, while 10 times as many more each year die of AIDS.

The United Kingdom government led by Tony Blair is showing a special concern with Africa’s problems which will figure large at this autumn’s Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting (CHOGM) in Brisbane, Australia.

Blair says: “There is a dismal record of failure in Africa on the part of the developed world that shocks and shames our civilisation.”

And Belgium, which has just taken over the revolving six-month presidency of the EU, says that it wants a special focus on the problems of Central Africa.

The crucial task for the new organisation will be to boost political stability and economic development across a continent where local conflicts still abound and where corruption is an abiding menace. The new body plans to spearhead a drive for more aid and investment with the so-called African Initiative.

This is a merger of the Millennium African Recovery Plan (MAP) led by South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki and the Omega Plan driven by the Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wad, and it has a vicious circle to break.

Currently the world’s global corporations are chary of investing while they see so much unrest and lawlessness across the African continent. But the lack of investment simply fuels more despair and thus more lawlessness among young Africans emerging from their schooling, where they get it, with no jobs to go to.