1 Why a Yearbook on the African Union?
The main reason for starting this yearbook project is the lack of easily accessible, reliable, contextualised, and continuous information on the activities of the African Union (AU) – an intergovernmental organisation that was founded in 2001 as successor to the Organisation of African Unity (OAU, established in May 1963). Arguably, the AU and its various actors may be living in a diplomatic bubble in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, with a considerable disconnect from ‘the African people’. But, at the same time, in the few years since being established the Union has become a major actor in global affairs that is aggregating the interests of its 55 members. For the United Nations (UN) and the European Union (EU), the AU Commission (AUC) has become the main intermediary between AU member states and the world outside the continent. The practical relevance of the continental body can be felt in many policy arenas, from peace and security to climate change to trade – to name but a few. In early 2020, the African Union’s public health agency, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), was invaluable in terms of preparing national health systems to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic. Yet, despite the increased agency in recent years of the African Union in general, and the AUC in particular, little is known – outside expert policy or academic circles – about the Union’s activities. The editor-in-chief and the editorial board hope that, with gaining breadth and depth over the years, a Yearbook on the African Union will help to address these needs and become a reliable source for those with a deeper interest in the African Union.
From an academic point of view – and here I also reflect on my own experience of being the supervisor of more than two dozen PhDs on the African Union and related peace and security topics as well as the director of master’s studies and a PhD programme on peace and security in Africa1 – it can be rather challenging, if not quite frustrating, to do research on the African Union. Often
Of course, since 2014, there has been the laudable joint initiative by the AUC and the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade to publish an African Union Handbook (see AUC and MFAT 2021).3 The handbook focuses on factual overviews as well as on memberships, offices, and institutions – but not on policies. In contrast, the Yearbook on the African Union aims at providing detailed and contextualised information on the development of important policy fields. Its aspiration is to be both documenting and analytical. In addition, since 2016 the AU’s Directorate of Information and Communication has been publishing AU ECHO, which has become an entertaining and informative annual magazine around core Union policies (African Union 2021a).
And then there are also two yearbooks edited by institutions belonging to the AU orbit. In 2017, the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR), the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (AfCHPR), and the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (ACERWC) joined forces to launch the African Human Rights Yearbook (ACHPR 2017). Four bilingual volumes (in English and French) have been published since with Pretoria University Law Press. This effort is financially supported by the German development agency, the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ). The yearbook brings together experts in law from Africa and beyond. The quality is high, academically rich in perspective, and robustly analytical. Starting with volume two, the editors gave the publication a yearbook-like character by introducing regular sections of articles
In fact, there are few international organisations producing official yearbooks that cover the whole spectrum of their respective activities; basically, it is only the UN and the EU. The voluminous Yearbook of the United Nations is slightly running behind; the latest issue, published in 2019, covers the year 2014 (United Nations 2019). In comparison, the European Council is more up to date; the latest European Yearbook was released in 2018 (European Council 2018). Content-wise, the UN’s yearbook follows in a very detailed way the work of the body’s committee structure. And the European Yearbook concentrates on the 19 European supranational organisations as well as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
In addition to official yearbooks, there are also academic yearbooks – often relating to the field of international law. The Max Planck Yearbook of United Nations Law (Lachenmann and Wolfrum 2019) contains 16 chapters on topical issues (e.g., the reform of the UN Security Council) and one book review. The Yearbook on European Integration (published in German by Weidenfeld and Wessels 2019) systematically takes stock of political developments in the EU, including over 90 (an impressive number in itself) brief entries on EU institutions, political infrastructures, EU domestic politics, EU foreign relations, the EU and its neighbours, the EU and other organisations, as well as the respective Europe policies of member states. In addition, there is a semi-official, topical, and rather detailed Yearbook of European Security published by the European Union Institute for Security Studies (cf. Fiott and Theodosopoulos 2020). And with regard to the African continent, there is the African Yearbook of International Law, launched in 2003, with the latest issue covering the period 2017/2018 (Niyungeko 2020).4
So, by way of conclusion, outside the fields of human rights there are neither official yearbooks from or about the African Union nor academic yearbooks
2 The Yearbook’s Approach
Mind you, the present volume is not the Yearbook OF the African Union, but a Yearbook ON the African Union. It cannot be emphasised strongly enough that the editor-in-chief and the editorial board are not pretending or claiming to speak on behalf of the African Union – far from it. This is an academic project: nothing more, nothing less. The Yearbook brings together a group of scholars that have previously published not only on African Union policies, but oftentimes also in interaction with AU officials, even sometimes working as consultants for the Union over many years. The editors and contributors share an interest in the agency of the African Union, the Regional Economic Communities (RECs), and other African actors.5 In terms of methodological background, we do so from a perspective of historical institutionalism and organisational sociology. Thus, we nurture the development of an understanding of the various interests playing out in the African Union in a historical perspective, of the dynamics between its actors and within particular institutions, as well as of the impact these activities have (had) in global politics. The approach is inductive, rather than deductive. This Yearbook is not guided by specific theories but interested in what actually is happening in the corridors of the African Union and beyond.
Against this background, the target audience of the Yearbook on the African Union is imagined as fairly broad and diverse. It ranges from fellow academics as well as journalists, both based on the continent and abroad, who are covering the African Union and related policies on a regular basis, to post-graduates of various kinds who are making their first steps into the orbit of this exciting institution and may be in need of some guidance. But we also hope that the very people working in the institution and the RECs as well as their ‘international partners’, i.e., members of the donor community, may consider this publication to be of some value for their own work.
The Yearbook on the African Union comprises four parts: (1) the Year-in-Review, (2) chapters on African Union policy fields, (3) book reviews, and (4) three appendices. In the first part, the Yearbook is opened by three pieces: The Annual Interview on the African Union, an overview on The State of the Union, and a reflection on the role of the Union’s chairperson. The rationale for the interview is to discuss in an in-depth manner a topic that has dominated Union debates and activities in the previous year by reflecting upon it with a key actor. Deliberately, for 2020 The Annual Interview does not follow the Union’s ‘Theme of the Year’ (in 2020, it was ‘Silencing the Guns: Creating Conducive Conditions for Africa’s Development’; see AU Council 2019).
The following chapter, The State of the Union, is designed as a discussion of important internal developments of the African Union as an institution. The AU itself is the result of a negotiated transformation from one international organisation to another. And in its short history since 2001, the Union has continuously changed, with structures and policies coming under scrutiny and in turn leading to modifications and reformulations. In this edition of the Yearbook, two issues stand out: the Union’s finances and the plan for institutional reform. In the past, the African Union has been described has a heavily donor-dependent institution. For this reason, member states in 2015 and 2016, respectively, agreed on a number of ambitious aims to increase ownership and sovereignty of the institution. Closely linked to the debate on the financial reform, in 2017 the Union also decided on reforming its institutions. The objective has been to increase efficiency, thereby strengthening the AU as an actor in global politics.
The third chapter is focused on the activities of the chairperson of the African Union. In accordance with Article 6 (4) of the 2000 Constitutive Act of the African Union (OAU 2000: 6[4]), the ‘Chairman of the Assembly’ is ‘elected after consultations among the Member States’. In contrast to the powers and functions of the AU Assembly and that of the chairperson of the AUC, the role of the chairperson of the Union is not detailed in the Constitutive Act. It was only with the 2003 Rules of Procedure for the Assembly (African Union 2002: §16) as well as the 2003 Protocol on Amendments to the Constitutive Act of the African Union (African Union 2003: §7) that the – fairly limited – procedural and managerial functions of the chairperson were detailed. This makes it a very interesting office that has been carried out in varying ways since its establishment. In February 2020, South African president M. Cyril Ramaphosa took over this position for a 12-month period. In this chapter, the aims, activities, and achievements of the chair for the year 2020 are reviewed.
However, by looking into the history of the organisation, more long-term priorities can be identified. Based on an analysis of all the decisions taken by the OAU and AU Assemblies, Executive Councils, as well as the PSC between 1963 and today (see Engel 2021), nine key policy fields have been identified. They may have been framed in different ways over the years, but these policy fields are the substantive issues the Union has been dealing with. These policy fields are at the heart of the second part of the Yearbook. In alphabetical order, they are (1) ‘development’, (2) education, science, and technology, (3) governance, (4) health, (5) infrastructure, (6) peace and security, (7) regional integration and trade, (8) strategic partnerships, and, last but certainly not least, (9) women and youth. Over time, other topics may develop into fully fledged policy fields – climate change is an obvious candidate.
Three themes may cut across chapters. The first is the evolving and in many fields constantly renegotiated relationship between the African Union and the RECs, i.e., the ‘division of labour in practice’. The second cross-cutting theme is the gap between the Union’s ambition to be, or to become, ‘a people’s Union’ and the reality of a disconnect that can be observed in most policy fields between the Union’s headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on the one hand, and the citizens, parliaments, and private sectors in AU member states, on the other. And the third theme, obviously, is the SARS-CoV-2/Covid-19 pandemic. However, the cross-cutting themes are only featured in chapters when there was substantial empirical dynamics to report upon.
Third, the Yearbook on the African Union also contains a book review section. It is edited by Katharina P.W. Döring (Södertörn University, Stockholm) and Jens Herpolsheimer (Leipzig University), two early-career scholars who have done incredible academic work on the African Union and the RECs thus far. The aim of this section is to critically highlight important academic contributions to the debate on the African Union, the RECs, and their entanglements in continental and global politics.
And fourth, the Yearbook provides a service section. It comprises three appendices: a chronicle of key events, an index of key African Union decisions, and an overview on selected office holders. The chronicle very briefly gives a chronological summary of the most important meetings and other key events. The index contains all decisions documented and available online by the AU Assembly, the AU Council, the AU/REC Mid-Year Coordination Meeting (MYCM), and the AU PSC. Unlike the UN, the AU does not provide an index function on its website. Usually, the AU Assembly takes about 40 to 50 decisions at its annual gathering, and the PSC roughly meets 35 times a year. And in addition, there is an equal number of decisions taken by the AU Executive Council and the AU/REC Mid-Year Coordination Meetings. The index is meant to provide quick guidance and access to those important AU documents that are in the public domain. Needless to say, that there are, undeniably, many more documents available on the websites of the Union and its various entities. The overview on key office holders provides information on the chairperson of the African Union, the chairperson of the AUC and the commissioners, the countries serving on the PSC, and the members of the Panel of the Wise.
4 Structure of the 2020 Yearbook
The first part of the Yearbook on the African Union, the Year-in-Review, features The Annual Interview, a chapter on The State of the Union, and a contribution discussing the Union’s chairperson. For the first edition of the Yearbook, the choice for the interview is obvious and unavoidable: the Covid-19 pandemic has gravely struck all African countries and, in most societies, exacerbated
Part 2 of the Yearbook is made up of nine topical chapters that highlight the dynamics in the Union’s substantive policy fields.6 The debate on ‘development’ and the role of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) is at the fore of chapter 5. Henning Melber (Nordic Africa Institute, Uppsala) critically deconstructs notions of development and focuses on the transformation, starting in 2019, of NEPAD into the African Union Development Agency. The chapter traces the current policies and impacts of this initiative. In chapter 6, Ulf Engel reviews dynamics in the field of education, science, and technology. Among others, this chapter revisits a number of strategies which are meant to support the establishment of knowledge societies on the continent. In chapter 7, Annie Chikwanha (University of Johannesburg) looks at the implementation of the African Governance Architecture (AGA), which is based on the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance (ACDEG). The African Charter was adopted in 2007 and became operational in 2012. She takes stock of the implementation of the agenda in terms of the domestication of human rights and democracy standards and, to this end, the transformation of the practices of AU member states. Because of the merger of the AU departments in charge of political affairs, one the one hand, and peace and security, on the other, which is planned for 2021, this chapter also delves into some of the historical
The corona pandemic has certainly dominated 2020. But the African Union, and its predecessor, have engaged in addressing diseases and pandemics for many years, including malaria, tuberculosis, HIV/Aids, and Ebola. In chapter 8, Habibu Yaya Bappah (Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria) and Edefe Ojomo (University of Lagos) dissect the broader context of the development of African Union health governance. In chapter 9, Tim Zajontz (Centre of African Studies, Edinburgh University) scrutinises the development of infrastructure as one of the pillars of the African Union’s continental development agenda. Specifically, this chapter recalls progress of the Programme for Infrastructure Development in Africa (PIDA), which is a strategic framework for developing continental (cross-border) infrastructures, such as energy, transport, information and communication technologies, as well as transboundary water resources. The traditionally paramount and fairly complex policy field of peace and security is addressed in chapter 10 by Dawit Yohannes Wondemagegnehu (Institute for Security Studies, Addis Ababa Office). Preventing, managing, and resolving peace and security issues remains the biggest challenge for the African Union. This chapter provides an overview on AU initiatives vis-à-vis transregional conflicts as well as on the collaboration with the RECs and its international partners in this respect. The chapter also addresses the evolution of the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA).
The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCTA) formally entered into force on 30 May 2019. With 54 member states, it has created the largest trade bloc in the world. It has certainly induced new dynamics across the continent in the area of regional integration and trade. In chapter 11, Katharina P.W. Döring and Ulf Engel analyse the effects of harmonising African policies on trade in goods and in services, investment, intellectual property rights, competition, and dispute settlement in a global context. They also look at how this project relates to the regional integration policies of the eight RECs officially recognised by the African Union as partners.7 In chapter 12, Adekeye Adebajo (Institute for Pan-African Thought and Conversation, University of Johannesburg) revisits the development of the two strategic partnerships the AU has developed since
The Book Review section makes up the third part of the Yearbook on the African Union. Katharina P.W. Döring and Jens Herpolsheimer have selected a range of interesting new publications that are likely to advance the field of the study of the African Union and the RECs. In the first issue of the Yearbook, two monographs and three edited volumes have been chosen for closer inspection. Careful attention has been paid, so at least we hope, to knowledge production arising from the African continent and the diaspora. As a reader, or an author, please feel kindly invited to suggest titles for review in the next edition of the Yearbook on the African Union.
Finally, the fourth part of the Yearbook is designed as a service section for quick reference of key events, decisions, and officeholders.
References
Sources
ACHPR et al. (eds.) 2017. African Human Rights Yearbook, vol. 4. Pretoria: Pretoria University Law Press (edited by the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights and the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child).
Africa CDC 2021. Website ‘Africa CDC’. URL: <https://africacdc.org> (accessed: 30 June 2021).
African Union 2021b. ‘Flagship Projects of Agenda 2063’. Addis Ababa: African Union (URL: <https://au.int/en/agenda2063/flagship-projects> (accessed: 30 June 2021).
AUNY 2019. Africa at the United Nations. Yearbook 2019. New York NY: Permanent Observer Mission of African Union to the United Nations. URL: <https://www.africanunion-un.org/yearbook1> (accessed: 30 June 2021).
Literature
Molefe, Chedza 2021. ‘Key Primary Information Sources Emanating from the Organizaton of African Unity (OAU) to the African Union (AU): From the Lagos Plan of Action to Agenda 2063’. In M. Grilli and F. Gerits (eds.) Visions of African Unity. New Perspectives on the History of Pan-Africanism and African Unification Projects. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 401–424.
Since 2012, the programmes have been offered jointly by the Institute for Peace and Security Studies (IPSS) at Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia, and the Global and European Studies Institute (GESI) at Leipzig University, Germany.
ISS PSC Insights [Pretoria], 20 November 2020.
Actually, the AU/MFAT handbook echoes earlier, and in the end futile, attempts by Oxfam (2014 [2012]) to provide regular insights into the continental body.
In 2012, a Pan-African Yearbook of Law was started in Arusha, Tanzania. It was edited by the Pan-African Lawyers Union (PALU 2012), with financial support from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA). A call for abstracts for a second edition way launched in July 2015, but it seems it was a short-lived undertaking.
For the debate on African agency in global politics, see, among others, Brown and Harman (2013), Murithi (2014), Bischoff et al. (2015), and, more recently, Warner and Shaw (2018), Coleman and Tieku (2018) as well as Munyi et al. (2020) and Bischoff (2020).
Two chapters turned out to be force majeure. Both chapters 6 and 11 did not materialise as planned. In one case it was a quality issue, in the other the author originally scheduled for the chapter withdrew last minute.
The eight RECs officially recognised by the AU are the Arab Maghreb Union (UMA), the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), the Community of Sahel-Saharan States (CEN-SAD), the East African Community (EAC), the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS), the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), and the Southern African Development Community (SADC).