By Adama GAYE*
Anyone who doubted Africa’s growing importance in world affairs despite the transformative forces at work bent on regulating globalization and bringing about new disruptive political approaches based, mainly, on the return to nationalistic tendencies and protectionism, should look at how the debate surrounding the election of a new Chairperson to head the African Union Commission (AUC) is raging –not just within the shores of the continent !
Five candidates are running in this closely watched-race already generating what seems to be an African grand strategy diplomacy bringing involving stakeholders of all walks of life that in the past would not even noticed such a process. The candidates are:
The race will be decided at the end of January 2017 in Addis Ababa at the African Union Summit of Heads of State and Government when all the key positions to run the AUC will be up for grab. The mere fact that there is such an intense competition and attention around them indicate that Africa seems at last serious about allowing its main channel of political and economic cooperation to play its role at a time when all eyes are on a continent seen by even the most cynical pundit as one on the rise. No longer considered as the dark continent, nor the hopeless one, as some had the gut to in a not long recent past, but as the talk of a rising Africa appeared to recede following the dramatic decrease in the prices of raw material that sustain many of its resource-rich nations, the world has however come to conclude that a new narrative, a longer term one, should be associated with it from now on.
Whilst many other regions of the world are indeed undergoing difficult transitions –from America’s return behind its two oceanic shores due to the promised protectionist policies of its newly-elected President, Donald Trump, to a Europe grappling with a weakened economy and the Brexit appeal to its break up, and even to Asia, now confronted with the challenges of prospective internal conflicts between its main nations, Africa looks more than ever as the next frontier of development. It has nothing to do with the Middle East still facing its protracted conflict between Israel and its Arab neighbours while Latin America, the other region in the world, has yet to overcome its long economic decline since it was outpaced after the first industrial revolution.
For Africa, it is another, a different story, despite the political upheavals, here and there. Overall, it is about a situation where natural resources are discovered everywhere in the continent –from mineral to hydrocarbon ones; human resources constitute an unequal asset in terms of demographic dividend; economic progress even in countries without natural resources; all pinned by a clearer understanding of what Africa needs to do to claim the 21st century.
The big picture at hand should force all commentators and actors involved in this hugely important process to chose the person who will head the AUC to sail through the next crucial stages ahead to act wisely. The slightest mistake or poor appreciation of the stakes could in truth only lead Africa to missing what is a golden opportunity.
Let’s face it: as in any election, the one at the AUC will not be one without tensions nor even animosity. Yet, at the end of the day, because all the countries involved in it are aware now on the importance of the continental body. Even countries, like The Moroccan Kingdom, which had left it (since it withdraw from the Organisation of African Unity –OAU, its ancestor), have realised that: they are knocking at its doors to come back.
The whole world which is no longer seeing Africa as a second-class actor in global affairs is also willing to deal with the AUC as the main voice of Africa. Investors around the world are too paying attention to what is going on there. And the African people realise that with Agenda 2063, the road-map agreed upon by Africa in 2013, a powerful vision is now in place on various key issues, including Africa’s industrialisation, through agricultural development, infrastructure, institutional and individual upliftment, notably with a greater inclusion of youth and women in the development processes.
Africa seems to be in business as illustrated furthermore by the debate hosted in Addis Ababa by the AUC pitting the various candidates. From solving the remaining conflicts in the continent to providing home-grown financing mechanism and resources, to sustaining the long-term success of the continent, all the candidates discussed in-depth with candour and diplomacy alternatively on how best to make the AUC the tool for Africa’s peace, progress and prosperity.
Having been following this healthy debate, in which clearly the Kenyan candidate, Minister (Dr) Amina Mohamed, stood out for the clarity of her stances, I cannot but be surprised to have read a piece written –doctored?- by someone from Washington claiming she didn’t care about the plight of African migrants in Algeria when she visited that country. On terrorism as on migration, her stance has been loud and clear, right: these are issues, worthy to be addressed soberly, collectively, with all our countries, and foreign partners.
Because Africa is at a decisive cross-roads, and there seems to be a consensus as never before around the AUC in and out of the continent, the time has come to allow a mature discussion when the biggest challenges still facing us Africans to be sorted —the most vexing ones can only be resolved this way.
Then, we could focus on the bigger picture: how to make Africa great again, to make it what is should be: the continent where the sun shines all year long, where hope is on the rise, the new frontier of development. The new hope of a changing world.
Adama GAYE, a Senegalese writer, is author of a newly released book: Tomorrow, The New Africa!, Editions L’Harmattan, Paris.