INTRODUCTION The Acronym AU stands for African Union. It was launched officially on the 9th July 2002, in Durban South Africa, and its first chairman was being his Excellency Thabo Mbeki. Its headquarters are in Addis Ababa Ethiopia. AU is composed of fifty four (54) members which are African nations. 1.1 Origin of AU It originated from the former Organization of African Union (OAU). It was established on the 25th May 1963, under its first chairman the late Emperor Haile Sellassie with the following objectives; To promote unity and solidarity among African states, To coordinate and intensify their cooperation and efforts in order to attain better life for African people, To defend the sovereignty, territorial integrity as well as independence, To eradicate all forms of colonialism and exploitation and To promote International cooperation. 1.1.1 The change from OAU to AU The idea started in the mid 1990’s under the leadership of the former president of Libya, the late Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. Following such idea, it was then officially adopted in 2001 Lusaka Zambia, following the adoption of Constitution Act of the African Union. Factors that attributed to the transformation of OAU to AU are hereby mentioned in a nutshell. There were claims that during the three decades existence of OAU had registered more failures than success; hence a need for the transformation was inevitable. Persistency of disunity and political chaos in the continent, example given Intra and Interstate border conflicts, and civil wars, tribalism, there was sustained starvation, Increase in diseases, financial constraints, human rights abuse, it was not trustful as an organization that means always poor decision making. There was poor spending and at some time no accountability, dept crisis and embezzlement of organizational properties. 1.2 THE OBJECTIVIES OF AU: The AU has the following dominative objectives which are: to achieve greater unity and solidarity between Africa states, to defend sovereignty, territorial integrity of its members, to accelerate political, social and economic integration in the continent also to defend and promote African continent position on issues of interest to the continent that is having a spirit of common voice other objectives include promotion and protection of human rights in accordance with United Nation human right charter as well as African union human rights charter as well as promotion of democratic principles institutions popular participation as well as good governance to establish condition or environment which would enable the continent to pray a rightful role in the global economy and international negotiations, to promote science and technology and final to work with international partners in the process of poverty eradication. 2 MAIN BODY One may say that AU (African Union) is a new wine in the old bottle simply because of the following arguments, AU is just one way or another following the foot step of the OAU. Firstly, location of the headquarters; headquarters of AU are still located in Addis Ababa in Ethiopia the place where the former Organization of African Union (OAU) was geographically situated. Political instabilities, the persistence of chaos and instabilities within the African country members has being prevailing since its establishment and this vividly shows the recklessness of AU in solving and creating the peaceful environment within the Organization; as this seemed to be a failures which faced OAU. Member countries are conflicting among themselves thus resulting to the problem of increasing number of refugees in other countries example, in Ethiopia, Sudan, and Congo etc. Poverty: this is attributed by high illiteracy rates among many people in our continent; also many African countries are still depending upon external financial aids as a result, three quarters of the people in the member states live below level of (1 dollar per day). Poverty acts as a bottleneck in many development activities and thus decelerating the rate of development in the continent. Persistence of diseases: prevalence of diseases like AIDS, Flue, and meningitis do create barriers towards the efforts of cooperating effectively in the integration as well as slowing down development. This is so because due to such illness a lot of cash and other resources are directed to the care of such patients and on losing then labor force declines hence widening poverty crisis. Environmental hazards are still faced by African Union; problems like drought, floods disrupt the economic understanding thus leading to occurrence of famine and hunger in the continent, example in the Sub-Saharan African countries Increase in influx of refugees; among member states this problem is attributed by the civil wars or political traces taking place among countries. For example, the wars during Kenyan elections. Such an influx cost a lot the member countries in terms of catering for their needs. Some refugees tend to be unmanageable and hence attempt to cause terrorism in the countries they flow into, explosive population expansion; this creates pressure on resources and forces the governments to concentrate on solving the problem of population growth like food supply rather than focusing on the economic integration among the countries Poor infrastructure; these include poor communication and transport system, where there’re few roads and railways lines across the region thus slowing down the economic activities example trade and movement of factors of production Low level of science and technology; many African countries are still lowly developed in terms of science and technology. There are very few experts in the region hence posing a challenge to the member states of importing experts from outside at very higher costs as well as purchasing their products which in turn are very experience. 3 CONCLUSSION The African Union has encountered more failures rather than realizing its goals that is to say the reason for which its transformation has not been observed vividly. 4 BIBLIOGRAPHY Guerrieri, P and P.P. Padoan, (ends), (1988): The Political Economy of International Co-operation, Croom Helm, London Todaro, M.P., (1989): Economic Development in the Third World, Longman, New York and London. google/wikipedia
Posted on: Sat, 21 Sep 2013 00:41:07 +0000
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