AAP

When the OAU began operations in 1963, it had only 32 member states. By the time the organization was transformed into the African Union 40 years later, its membership had grown to 53 states. By the end of 2012, the majority of member states had accredited full-fledged permanent missions to the African Union Commission, in compliance with the provisions of the Constitutive Act of the Union. This...

~In his concise study, Colin Legum identified three distinctive epochs in the contemporary political...

~In the previous chapter, I outlined my proposal for fusionism, an integrated framework that seeks to explain international integration on the basis of an amalgamation of Intergovernmentalist and Institutionalist analytical traditions. In the following few chapters, I will demonstrate the utility of my proposal by analysing different aspects of the...

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~This chapter is the first substantive analysis of the preferences of African leaders. It shows how decolonization and stability represented the most pressing preference of African leaders from the 1960s up to the independence of South Africa in 1991. The chapter outlines the manner in which the OAU managed its mandate in these areas, and concludes...

The persistent economic crises that Africa became associated with during much of the post-independence period accounts for the generalized perception that African leaders paid scant attention to the socio-economic development of their countries. Indeed, conditions on the continent at the turn of the twenty-first century were sufficiently dire to lend credence to such a view. Africa not only...

~This chapter extends the examination of AU’s preferences by focusing on social questions, especially the Union’s mandate and challenges it faced in the area of health, education, gender and population. It shows that by and large, the African Union had little to its credit in these areas other than a few legal instruments. In my view,...

~An argument I advanced at the beginning of this study was that the African Union and the OAU were aggregates of national interests and constituted rational means of advancing national preferences in the face of limited individual capacity. The manner in which the union pursued its political, social and economic preferences has been covered in the...

~African politics has evolved considerably since independence. The leaders who led their countries to independence were relatively receptive to political pluralism, and in fact temporarily succeeded in instituting democracy or a semblance of it. But the arrival of the military and one-party regimes to the African political scene brought an end to...

~Structurally, the African Union was like a pyramid. At the apex was the Assembly of heads of state and government of the 53 member states. Below the Assembly was the executive council of foreign ministers. Slightly...

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~There was hardly any institution that was more central to the operations of the African Union than the commission. Combining both administrative and executive functions, the commission was the centrepiece of the Union and the locomotive of the whole integration process. As such, it constituted a perfect barometer of the state of the Union. This...

~The argument I advanced at the beginning of this study is that despite their strength, the analytical frameworks of the Intergovernmentalists and Institutionalists cannot on their own offer a comprehensive explanation of international integration. The limitation of the individual approaches accounts for my proposal for fusionism, an...

Abuja call for Accelerated Action towards Universal Access, 93

~Omar Alieu Touray is a Gambian diplomat and development professional. For several years, he was Permanent Representative of The Gambia to the African Union and Ambassador to Ethiopia with concurrent accreditation as High Commissioner to Kenya and South Africa. He had been Permanent...