The date 09/09/99 is a historic watershed for African politics.  It was on this date at the Mediterranean port of Sirte in Libya that the birth of a new baby, the African Union (AU), occurred. Its mission, unlike that of its predecessor, the Organization of African Unity (OAU), was to advance Africa towards economic integration and political federation.


The OAU had completed its mandate of liberating the continent from colonial domination with the ending of apartheid in South Africa in the 1980s. Now AU has to deliver in its objective goal if Africa is to be a political and an economic factor in a globalised world with the weight of its resources and over 800 million people, a sizeable market that the rest of the world cannot afford to ignore!

 
The existing boundaries of our 53 nonviable nation states in Africa today are, by and large, a product of the machinations orchestrated in the 1884 Berlin Conference in which European powers decided that Africa was up for grabs. As Africans, to continue to cherish and embrace such boundaries arbitrarily drawn on our continent to serve the interests of the European thieves, is –to say the least – the greatest folly of our times!


Our times are the days of border-less trade, in which our trading partners are the likes of China (20 percent of the human race), the European Union whose Euro  currency has overtaken the US dollar, the United States of America, an economic consumerist giant that has dominated world trade before the onslaught of other up-coming economic miracles like EU, Japan, China, India, and to some extent before its demise – the former Soviet Union.

 
Africa is still a sleeping economic giant! Despite its many years of being exploited by other forces for centuries, Africa is the future because it has its natural resources almost virgin unlike the over-exploited other parts of the world.


The Bri... [Read More]