An excellent, detailed, and lucid account of the historical perspectives, achievements, and challenges of the African Union in its first 10 years of existence, contributing to filling the gap in available published material on the Union. Authored by someone who has interacted with the Union in different capacities, including as his country’s representative, the book is a “must read” for all interested in having a better and a deeper understanding of one of Africa’s premier continental organizations.
Africa is a question whose answer is as huge, as complicated and as difficult as the Continent is big and diverse. Africa is, and shall remain, an enigma for a long time to come. Of the tomes of analysis and prescriptions, often over-simplified or patronizing, few insights are given into “the belly of the beast” to be able to understand sufficiently what lies at the heart of Africa, its problems and prospects.By pointing to integration, Dr Omar Touray is pointing us in the right direction and to a substantial part of the answer to the African question. That is the advantage of being the insider and the participant that he has been in birthing the African Union which is the pre-eminent continental institution for promoting and coordinating Africa’s integration efforts.This book is also a source of valuable information, not only as a compendium of the AU’s/Africa’s continental policy frameworks on everything from peace and security, to agriculture, to health and education, human rights, gender, trade and development, terrorism, immigration, trafficking in persons, drugs and arms, corruption, etc., etc. but, in most cases, also brings and insider’s perspective of how these frameworks were conceived, the main actors and the compromises that had to be made. It goes further to highlight limitations in the policy frameworks and the statuses of implementation; making the point that while Africa has an abundance of policy frameworks few of these are ever implemented, not least because of the AU’s limited autonomy or lack of enforcement authority.Another important point made in the book is that, whatever its weaknesses—and they are many—the OAU/AU has, on balance, accomplished much particularly with respect to its core mandate of decolonization of the continent, settling border disputes between Member States, dealing with disease epidemics like Ebola, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, coordinating Africa’s responses or positions in international for a and, much more than people ever give the AU credit for, its role in conflict prevention, management, resolution and peace-keeping where the AU is often the first responders, as was the case in Mali, Somalia, Central African Republic, Somalia and South Sudan.It is in this regard that the book makes the point emphatically that the AU, whatever its shortcomings, is not only indispensable to Africa, but that it is the pre-eminent organization of the continent and its importance has been, or should be recognized as such by any external partner wishing to have any meaningful engagement with Africa. It is no wonder that world leaders, including those of the United States, China, Japan, Germany, South Korea and others have trekked to Addis Ababa to the African Union Headquarters.Ambassador Touray’s book is a treasure trove of information that should be on the book-shelf of every student of Africa, researchers, and anyone interested in Africa and/ or the African Union.
