Dominant AU approach vs Union Government struggle

[RWalker]

To commemorate what it calls Africa Day, the Africn Union (AU) put together a seminar on Integration and Development, with the European Union (EU) playing a central role, along with the UN. At the same time the AU is busily trying to negotiate the use of NATO troops in Sudan...this is a pattern in everything the core of the central leadership of the AU does.

Much of the AU seems inordinately focused on the supposed irreplaceability of western European and North American know-how and capital. The elements in the AU advocating diversity in this area, for example the states that deal with China, Cuba, Venezuela and to a lesser extent those that trade heavily with states such as Russia, India are presenting useful alternatives to this unfortunate tendency.


The belief of the absolute importance of trade with the West is ridiculous and deliberately inculcated in people. Trade, what we call free trade, the West says, is the only path to development and thus you must organize your economy accordingly.

We know this is crap. As EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson said in response to the call for oppressed and exploited countries to leave the WTO Doha process, “this negative advice amounts to allowing the better off to climb the ladder of prosperity only to kick it away before others have the chance to follow.� Speech to political and business leaders, Wolfsberg, Switzerland


Note how he insists that there is only one economic game in town, the western economic system...this is just not true as Nkrumah and others proved over and over again.

As Nkrumah advised we will do much better socially and economically if we were in a position to analyze our resources, natural and human, organize our capital, train our people, plan and develop our positive prosperous society and civilization.
In the final analysis however the only surefire way to progress lies in the creation of a continental government. A government that can transform our natural resources into capital that would a powerful force in the global investment universe. A government that can build state of the art academic institutions to advance our peoples' grasp of science and technology. A government that could provide the environment conducive to the positive development of the universal and specific facets of African cultures.

To do these things we need a Union Government that can administer the continent and the affairs of the global African citizenship in the interest of each and every African in the world. We need defense capabilities that will guarantee sovereignty for Africa's people, not military arrangements that only aim at insuring "orderly marketing" for western trans-nationals and banks. We need a civil society that holds the rights and interest of people as superior to the rights of the plundering groups in the world.

Only a Union Government can do this. We must collectively help more of our brothers and sisters inside and outside the AU understand this. May 25th a sacred day for Africans...is an excellent time to recommit ourselves to this.