54th Africa Day: Celebrating freedom in ‘difficult environment’
Last week, the 54th anniversary of ‘Africa Day’ was celebrated across the continent and the Diaspora, with African nationalities coming together in cultural attires and swapping traditional cuisines.
The day is celebrated annually on May 25, commemorating the founding of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) on this day in 1963.
Africa Day dates back to 1958 when 17 African nations established the African Liberation Day, to commemorate their independence from European colonialism.
Then, the first ‘Conference of Independent African States’ brought the fathers of Africa’s liberation movements together with 32 independent nations led by Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere, Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah, Guinea’s Sékou Touré and Zambia’s Kenneth Kaunda - founding the Organization of African Unity (OAU) in May 1963 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The OAU was succeeded in 2002 by the African Union (AU).
However, five decades after African States attained independence, the continent is blighted with multifaceted challenges ranging from politics, economy to conflicts and exodus of its young population out of the continent.
Though, Africa has made significant progress in political and economic areas, the region remains faced with persistent conflicts and the multiplication of terrorist activities and violent extremism, which impact negatively on its development process.
In his message to commemorate the 2017 Africa Day, the Chairman of the AU and President of the Republic of Guinea, Professor Alpha Conde, said Africans celebrated this year’s event in a difficult environment where a part of the region is affected by severe drought with serious collateral effects.
The 2017 event, themed “Harnessing the Demographic Dividend through investments in Youth”, recognized the fact that Africa is the youngest region in the world, with two out of three Africans less than 25-years-old.
This indicator, according to the AU chairman, is a major asset to drive economic and social transformation throughout the continent.
But African youths form the largest chunk of migrants on sea route to Europe in search of greener pasture.
Italy has become the main arrival point in Europe for people fleeing areas afflicted with famine, drought, persecution, violence, poverty and extreme inequality most of them crossing the Sahara desert and Mediterranean from Libya.
On Thursday, June 1, 2017, 44 Ghanaians and Nigerians died of thirst after their truck broke down in the Sahara Desert in northern Niger. Six people, all women, survived the tragic incident, according to Red Cross official, Lawal Taher.
The details of a classified report leaked to Germany’s Bild newspaper revealed that up to 6.6m people are waiting in countries around the Mediterranean to cross into Europe. They include more than 2.5m in North Africa, waiting to attempt the perilous crossing by boat.
Thousands of them were caught up in the human trafficking web in Libya and are subjected to inhuman treatment with some being sold by their captors in “slave markets.”
“It is a very sad situation,” Senegalese Ambassador to Nigeria, Abubakar Samba told Daily Trust on Sunday in an interview recently. “All of us are aware, yet this phenomenon is still on-going. Why? The reason is because our economy is not very strong enough to give them work.”
The solution to the crisis, he said, is for African countries to develop their agricultural sector, which, according to him, can absolve the majority of youths. Financial dependency The issue of financial independence of pan-African bloc has been a source of worry for a long time, as much of its working budget is financed by foreign donors.
The construction of the new AU headquarters was funded by China and African countries pay for only about 40 per cent of the AU’s budget. China, the European Union and the US pay for the rest.
Between 2009 and 2010, 66.36% of the total AU budget was financed by only five countries Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Nigeria, and South Africa.
As these countries continue to battle financial crisis, AU’s reliance on donor agencies for fund increased from 45% of the budget in 2010 to over 70% in 2015.
Funds from the European Commission increased from €91 million in 2010 to €330 million in 2015, of which almost 90% was for peace and security.
However, finding alternative sources of funding for AU has been discussed severally at various experts and ministerial meetings, but with no implementation.
At the 27th AU Summit in Kigali, Rwanda, a new proposal to finance AU’s working budget using mainly domestic resources was adopted.
Donald Kaberuka, AU High Representative for the Peace Fund, proposed a 0.2% levy on all African eligible imports. This is expected to bring in up to $1.2 billion yearly for the AU.
For African union to be credible, the Guinean leader Alpha Conde said “our panAfrican institution can no more rely on financial assistance from the partners. It is time, high time, to take over the funding ourselves for our own ambitions and our own dreams.”
According to him, the immediate implementation of the financial reform of the Union would lead to a range of substantial funding.
However, as with the previous proposals, implementation and compliance by member states to the new proposal remains a huge challenge.
“Proposals had been made to improve the financing but the issue is about implementing our decision,” said Prof. Abdoulaye Bathily, a former Senegalese minister and one of the five aspirants who contested for the AU commission chair in the January 31, 2017 elections. Low intra-continental trade Intra-continental trading is regarded as the pathway to economic development but figures in Africa leave much to be desired.
Africa has the lowest figure of intra-continental trading in the world, with its members posting just 11 per cent of trading with one another.
In 2014 in Europe, for example, 69% of exports were to other countries on the continent. In Asia that figure stood at 52% and in North America at 50%.
However, getting the right infrastructure, especially in two critical areas of electricity and transport, has been identified as the solution to improving economic integration in Africa.
Constructing rail lines linking two countries together presents a good business opportunity between them, Samia Zekaria Gutu, Ethiopian ambassador to Nigeria told Daily Trust on Sunday.
“That brings us closer and strengthens integration. Infrastructure is very important road, air transport and rail. Once this is in place, the intra-Africa trade will improve,” she said.
The Guinean president, Prof Conde said to stimulate economic growth on the continent, the only valid alternative viable for Africa is electrification, which must be a priority.
“The access for all to energy and more specifically, to clean energy, is essential to industrialization and structural transformation of the continent.” Conflict-ridden Africa Africa continues to battle numerous conflicts in the Lake Chad Basin region to the al-Shabab militancy in East Africa. Political crises have also caused thousands of displacements in South Sudan, Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, among others.
“Beyond this tragic reality, another concern for the continent is emigration, the crisis of refugees and displaced persons. Indeed, the conflicts in Africa continue to cause massive displacement of populations, which is at the origin of many humanitarian crises,” Alpha Conde said.
In a bid to ‘silence the guns’ and rid the continent of conflict, the AU 50th Anniversary Solemn Declaration in 2013 pledged “not to bequeath the burden of conflicts to the next generation of Africans and undertake to end all wars by 2020.”
Time, however, will determine the sincerity of this ‘solemn declaration’ by African leaders.
Meanwhile, the African Union in 2015 adopted ‘Agenda 2063’ action plan, a strategic framework for the socio-economic transformation of the continent over the next 50 years.
What this means is that the continent which had suffered series of challenges for over 50 years, will now have to wait for another 50 years to realise its aspiration.