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Pop star and activist Bono has called for the creation of a United States of Africa, saying that a pan-continental identity would serve as a catalyst for resolving its conflicts.
The U2 frontman, who was in Japan to take part in a major development conference last week, said that a United States of Africa "would be the dream" in the long term. "I think a kind of broader African identity is going to be very important to deal with tribal tensions," The Irish rock star said that developing a broader identity may seem largely "poetic," but has been proven successful. "Irish people used to always have a little giggle when they would see Americans saluting their flags in schools, and then the whole standing there, singing the flag thing," Bono said. "But as you get to know a little bit more about things, you start to think, ah, there's so many different tribal groups in the United States, that to create a national identity of that size, they had to really work at this kind of patriotism," he said. The African Union was created in 2002 with inspiration from the European Union, but critics say the body has lacked the funds and political will to take effective action on the continent's flashpoints. It intervened in 2004 in the strife-torn western Sudanese region of Darfur, but has relinquished leadership to the United Nations to form a joint peacekeeping force.
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In the US of Africa, everyone wants to be Washington, D.C.ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia: The United States of Africa. It's one of few concrete plans African leaders agreed on as they struggled with issues of peacekeeping and political disputes at this week's continental summit.
One problem is, so many countries want to be Washington, D.C.
African leaders have been pushing for a continental government for years. And the plan continued to garner widespread support from the 40-odd delegations at the African Union summit that ended Saturday in Ethiopia's capital.
Yet even countries facing disputed elections and conflict at home were loath to suggest they would be anything but a leader of the group - even given the lighthearted question of what U.S. state they most resemble. Their responses highlight pecking order positioning that could keep a federally unified continent from ever becoming a reality.
"Sudan is something like Washington, D.C.," said Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem, Sudan's ambassador to the United Nations. "Sudan is always a leader. So we want to have the White House of Africa, the Pentagon of Africa."
Not so fast, Sudan.
Bamanga Tukur, a native of Nigeria and chairman of the AU's New Partnership for African Development, gave the honor to Ethiopia, the only African nation to have never been colonized. "Ethiopia can be Washington," he said. As for his own, oil-rich nation, Tukur said: "Nigeria can be Texas. Isn't that nice?" But, Asked if Addis Ababa - the headquarters of the African Union - might someday become the African Beltway, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi was similarly cagey. "That's in the future," he said.
Any such future is far away. Everyone agrees that a unified African government could take decades, and would require many nations to make drastic improvements to governance, infrastructure, poverty and education. But the stickiest issue is power, so most leaders advocate a slow approach that will let them cement their regional ties and position, analysts say. Others - notably, formerly isolationist Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi and Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade - have called for quicker integration, which might favor their more established governments.
"Obviously, power politics are taking place throughout the continent," said Kenneth Mpyisi, director of the Institute for Security Studies, a think tank in Addis Ababa. "We have various regional powers in different parts of the continent. ... They would obviously want to retain a certain amount of power in their sphere of influence." Still, presidential candidates are already rumored. Libya's Gadhafi, a regional leader with a huge, oil-rich country and aspirations of global statesmanship, passionately argues for bringing Africa together immediately, and recently canvassed West Africa.
While no immediate union came from this week's summit, Gadhafi did push successfully for a presidential committee that will lay out proposals at a Cairo summit in June. "I am satisfied," he told the Associated Press. "We have reached an agreement today."
But when asked if he aspired to one day be president of the United States of Africa, Gadhafi simply laughed and walked away.
Others were more forthcoming. Emmanuel Issoze-Ngondet, Gabon's ambassador to the AU, had big dreams for his small, oil-rich coastal nation. Gabon's foreign minister, after all, was selected as the AU's new operating chief during the Addis Ababa meeting. "If we finally reach the goal of the United States of Africa, Gabon will be like California," he said. "Why not?"
When it was pointed out to him that, geographically, California would dwarf the West African nation, he smiled.
"Maybe like Los Angeles, then," he said.
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Africa: Scholars Divided Over a United States of AfricaDaniel Gwarbarah & Leocadia Bongben 23 February 2009 Though most analysts and adherents on the idea of a United States of Africa agree that there is need for unity, there is disagreement on the form it should take. Resource persons at the monthly Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Press Club, meeting on February 20, highlighted the cracks in the lofty project, with the absence of strong regional integration bodies. They wondered how African States can unite when there is disunity amongst States of the same sub-region. They quoted the Central African Sub Region where Cameroonians have been driven away from Equatorial Guinea on several occasions as an example. According to Hughes François Onana, CRTV journalist, for African States to unite, there is the necessity to ameliorate credibility and ensure continuity in economic reforms, reinforce the bargaining power in the international scene and harmonise legislation to promote good governance, democracy and human rights. Maurice Tadadjeu, lecturer at the Yaounde I University, for his part, perceives the project of a United States of Africa as a reality and already functional. Having followed the project from inception up to this moment, he argues that the project of uniting Africa is not Kaddafi's idea, but an idea that has existed for at least a century. The principal reason that blurs efforts is the lack of personal engagement, he argued. He regretted that African leaders are divided on the issue as perceived during the 9th African Union summit. Tadadjeu underscored the necessity of sensitising journalists as well as the population on the project. Tracing the history of the Pan African Hubert Kamgang, Chairman of the Union of the Peoples of Africa party, maintained that the idea was basically to abolish the colonial pact and to liberate African States from colonialism.
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