OAU and AU: Good Legacies, Bad Legacies

The Organization of African Unity (OAU) and later on the African Union (AU) will celebrate its fifty year anniversary on 25 May, 2013 in Addis Ababa. The Golden Jubilee celebration of an institution like the OAU and later the African AU is a special event. For Africans and friends of Africa, it has greater public ...

China-Africa Relations Democracy and Delivery

The recently concluded Fifth Forum for China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) adopted the Beijing Action Plan for 2013-2015 that will provide African countries with USD 20 billion as concessional loans for the development of infrastructure, agriculture, and manufacturing. This concessional loan is twice as much as that pledged in 2010. In 2011, trade between the People’s Republic ...

Ethiopia and the OAU: Recalling the contributions of Ethiopia’s Pan-Africanist leaders

Fundamental tenets of the Ethiopian Movement were self-worth, self-reliance and freedom. These tenets drew the advocates of Ethiopianism, like a magnet, to the growing political movement. That political movement was to culminate in the formation of the ANC in 1912. It is in this sense that the ANC, we, trace the seeds of the formation ...

The African Union in Light of the Arab Revolts: An appraisal of the foreign policy and security objectives of South Africa, Ethiopia and Algeria

The fall of authoritarian regimes in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya has changed political dynamics on the African continent. One immediate concern has been the implications of these developments for the African Union (AU) and its member states. Would overall political dynamics in the AU be changed? Would the most powerful member states use the altered ...