African Affairs 103:249-267 (2004)
© Royal African Society 2004
Article |
Explaining the clash and accommodation of interests of major actors in the creation of the African Union
Thomas Kwasi Tieku is a Ph.D candidate in International Relations at the University of Toronto, Canada. In collaboration with Kristiana Powell of the North-South Institute/Project Ploughshares and Charles Burton of Brock University, he recently completed a study on the African Union for the Canadian government. He is grateful to Jeffrey Kopstein, Dickson Eyoh, Robert Matthews, Richard Sandbrook, Erin Norman Hannah and Anil Mathew Varughese for helpful comments on earlier versions of this article. The usual disclaimers apply
Abstract
The rapid creation of the African Union (AU) has been described as one of the most puzzling events in interstate co-operation in contemporary Africa. While studies published so far on the subject express surprise at the AU's speedy creation, none makes any attempt to explain the clash of interests and ideas of the key actors and how they were accommodated in order to create the AU. This article attempts to fill this gap by exploring the interests and ideas that drove the AU process. It argues that the introduction at the Algiers summit in 1999 of two separate reform packages that were meant to reform the OAU in line with the foreign policy interests of Nigeria and South Africa set in motion the process that eventually led to the creation of the AU.