"Black" Renaissance

Last week in Lusaka, the capital of Zambia, the foundations of the African Union were laid on the ruins of the Organization of African Unity (OAU). Two personalities, Kofi Annan and the controversial Libyan president Muammar Gaddafi, sponsored this historic event. They fostered a vision of a more autonomous Africa, able to look to its future with more optimism.

After 38 years of illusions and disappointments that characterized the post-colonial era in which the OAJ operated without significant success, the AU is moving into the future inspired by the experience of the European Union (EU): gradual integration that should result in the creation of joint bodies of 54 countries (parliament, government, central bank ) and, of course, the common market. The difference in the approach to African reality is huge, and that's why there were no illusions this time. Namely, no one is fooled that there are no big obstacles in the way of the African Union: poverty, cruel and bloody wars, a huge number of refugees, dictatorships, AIDS...

The Libyan president did his best in his new pan-African role. He also invested a million dollars so that the success of the meeting would not come into question. For skeptics, this represents, in addition to the already mentioned African problems, an additional unknown. Can the initiative so fervently championed by Gaddafi end well?

RESPONSIBILITY: African leaders of undoubted reputation also stand for the African Union. This is how OUN Secretary General Kofi Annan, in his speech in Lusaka, linked the crisis of the Black Continent to its entire political class. In his opinion, all African leaders, without exception, are responsible for the current situation. "Africa today finds itself in the conditions of Europe after the Second World War," said Annan. The goal of Africa becoming a continent of peace, cooperation, economic progress and respect for human rights is therefore very far away. But the sooner you move towards it, the closer and more certain it will be. This would be the essence of the "African renaissance" that lies at the heart of the two plans discussed at the Lusaka summit. It is about African initiatives which includes the program Millennium South African President Thabo Mbeki and the plan Omega, whose creator is the Senegalese Abdoulaie Wade.

Programme Millennium it was created as an authentic African attempt to create an action plan that would attract financial support from the rich world. South African President Mbeki together with the presidents of Nigeria and Algeria, Olusegun Obasanjo and Abdelaziz Bouteflika, initiated an initiative whose goal would be to inspire Africa to build a better future for itself, but also to convince the rich to think about it seriously. African leaders would undertake to strive for democracy and human rights in the future, reform their ruined economies and tackle the disease that affects at least 20 million Africans - AIDS. In return, the rest of the world would offer Africa significant debt relief and reinvestment. This plan, as an authentic African initiative, will be supported by British Prime Minister Blair at the G-8 summit in Genoa.

The Senegalese president's plan, as opposed to an ambitious program Millennium, is a call to the developed world to provide greater aid to Africa than it has done so far. In Africa, namely, many think that aid is a kind of debt that the rich owe to them. It is known that, for example, President Mugabe blames all of Zimbabwe's problems on the colonial past and "neo-colonialism". Reconciling African differences will obviously not be an easy task. But it seems that the historical moment is more favorable for that. "Globalization with a human face", the motto of the G-8 summit and the invitation to the participation of representatives of the poor countries of the world (Nigeria, South Africa, Algeria and Mali, on behalf of the "Black Continent", Bangladesh on behalf of Asia and San Salvador on behalf of the Central America), may be a sign of better times.

U ISTOM CITY: At the summit in Lusaka, a new general secretary of the OAJ was elected. We are talking about Amar Esay, the president of the Ivory Coast, whose main task will be the transformation of the old African organization into a new one. The seat remains in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), while the rest of the bodies have yet to be determined. But this is not the only open question. The most important thing is related to the very future of the African Union. Is it possible to realize the idea of ​​a common continental parliament when in many African countries there are no national parliaments? African dictators certainly do not like this idea. Will a "core" be created first, like the European one, from which a union would be created over time, by gradual expansion and opening for new members? The trouble is that the countries that would be politically and economically capable of this are geographically quite far from each other.

That is why the African Union today seems more like a dream than a prospect. But it is known that without dreams there is no realization of them.