The Integration Process and the Perspective of the United States of Africa

Giampiero Bordino
Professor in Contemporary History and Political Analyst. President of the Einstein Center for International Studies

Among the various processes of regional integration in progress in the world, all to some extent linked to the model of the European historical experience, the ongoing one in Africa has a meaning of particular importance. In fact, Africa is, in perspective and in many ways, one of the largest and most important geo-economic and geo-political areas in the world. In Africa today, 60% of the population is less than 24 years old. According to forecasts, in the coming decades the African population will double, going from the current 1.2 billion inhabitants to 2.5 in 2050. A quarter of the world population, while, to make a meaningful comparison, the European population will then represent only a twentieth of the total.

In Africa, a continent still strongly marked by the historical legacy of European colonialism, which in particular drew up borders and geo-political configurations that are often completely artificial and arbitrary, the process of integration has started amid great difficulties and contradictions since a long time now. Initially with the Organization of African Unity (OAU), founded in 1963 at the time of the great hopes brought about by decolonization, and then, after the end of that experience, with the African Union, founded in 2002 and made up of 55 States of the continent. In the meantime, with the Abuja Treaty of 1991, the project was also born, although in fact it never really took off, of a common African currency, called “Afro”, to be implemented by 2020, starting with the 15 member countries of the Economic Community of West Africa (Ecowas/Cedeao), and the creation of the Central African Bank by 2025. Much more recently, in March 2018, the Assembly of the Heads of State and Government of the African Union adopted the Treaty establishing the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA, in the English acronym), which will enter into force at the  attainment of the twenty-second instrument of ratification (so far it has reached 10 ratifications). The Treaty, which affects a population of 1.2 billion people with a GDP of over two trillion dollars a year, aims to promote the interchange between African countries (it should be remembered that intra-African exchanges are currently only about 19% of the continent’s total trade) through a progressive elimination of tariff and non-tariff barriers. This is a very important prospect for Africa, given that the countries of the continent, whose trade is oriented for over 80% towards Europe (Africa’s first trading partner), Asia (China in particular has become the second commercial partner) and America, are too strongly influenced today by extra-African exchanges, which are not very diversified and have a lower added value with respect to the domestic ones.

But the African integration process must not and cannot be only economic and commercial, according to the AfCFTA model. As in the case of Europe, and of every other process of continental integration, the political and institutional dimension is essential; it should aim to a shared sovereignty, without which neither peace, which is the condition for making every other common project possible, nor the capacity of acting effectively in the world can be guaranteed. In this sense and in this perspective, the recent speech by the African leader Arthur Mutambara, former Prime Minister of Zimbabwe from 2009 to 2013, delivered at the University of Oxford in January 2019, is of great value and significance. For Mutambara, which is proposing himself as somehow the heir of one of the great “fathers” of decolonization and pan-Africanism, Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah, the African Union, as envisaged in the institutional treaty, is today completely inadequate to promote a true take-off of Africa, because it is founded on the primacy of the national sovereignty of the member states and on the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of each state. Instead, the African leader observes: “For a start, we need the United States of Africa – a country, not a union of sovereign states. We need to abolish national sovereignty and embrace continental sovereignty”. And then: “The issues of democracy, human rights violations, poverty eradication and shared economic prosperity, can be best addressed centrally by a strong continental Unitary Government, or a Federal Government”. In the world scenario, this is also the only path, according to Mutambara, in order to be able to negotiate effectively with the great continental powers present in the world, such as the United States, China or Russia, making the interests and values of Africa prevail. Not surprisingly, notes the African leader, “the big economies ... would like us to remain fragmented and disunited. It serves their geopolitical and economic interests. They extract more financial value and competitive advantage from our divisions, strategic incoherence and lack of scale”. The United States of Africa, concludes Mutambara, is certainly a very difficult, but not impossible prospect. “Yes, the United States of Africa looks overly ambitious, if not impossible. It is precisely for this reason that we should aspire to it. As South African President Nelson Mandela taught us: “It always looks impossible until it’s done”.

In this context, it is useful to point out how great an importance the role of the European Union could have, if the European countries will be able to carry out the appropriate choices and policies, for bringing about the African integration advocated by Arthur Mutambara. Europe, which, bear in mind, is only a few kilometers away from Africa and is inevitably the main destination of the migratory processes coming from that continent, is the area of the world that objectively has more interest in a balanced and peaceful development of Africa, with a view to a partnership between two large federal unions of continental dimensions, the European and the African. This too is certainly a very difficult and ambitious prospect, but there are certainly some pre-conditions that can make it possible: the century-old historical links existing, for better or worse, between the two areas; the strong commercial and economic relations in place (Europe is the first trading partner of Africa); and, in addition, the significant presence of African diasporas in Europe, which may represent cultural and human “bridges” between the two continents (economically, 36% of the total remittances arriving in Africa are of European origin).

Africa and Europe are linked in the path to a common future, and it is the most realistic of utopias to plan and build this future together.