50 years in search of unity and development

Claudia Fonseca Sosa

ON May 25, 1963, leaders of 32 African countries initiated a new stage in the history of Africa by signing in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the Organization of African Unity (OAU) Charter, which subsequently gave rise to the African Union (AU) in July 2002.

Decolonization had arrived and the poorest nations were seeking their own way. The founding charter emphasized the challenge of attaining genuine independence, which would eradicate all forms of exploitation and racial humiliation.

Following these guiding principles, in the 1980’s the OAU implemented the Lagos Plan of Action, directed at endogenous development. Eleven years later, through the Treaty of Aruba, the organization assumed the goal of establishing institutions such as the African Central Bank, the Monetary Union, the Court of Justice and, in particular, the Pan-African Parliament.

This legislative body came into existence in 2004, with the objective of gaining consensus around decisive issues on the regional and international political agenda.

In 2002, the OAU was formally replaced by the African Union (AU) which, since then has guided the efforts of member countries to grow from the economic and industrial point of view and find a more just way of sharing the continent’s natural resources among more than one billion Africans.

The African Union currently comprises 53 full member countries, plus Haiti with observer status. Madagascar has been temporally suspended from the mechanism on account of its 2009 political crisis, as have Guinea Bissau and the Central African Republic, due to coups d’état in 2012 and 2013, respectively. Morocco gave up its seat when the organization accepted the entry of the Saharwi Arab Democratic Republic in 1984.

The organization has played a key role in the resolution of national conflicts and the promotion of a state of law throughout the continent. It has also worked to fulfill the collective dream of independence leaders such as Julius Nyerere, Patricio Lumumba, Jomo Kenyatta, Kwame Nkrumah, Amílcar Cabral and Agostinho Neto: to have the African voice heard throughout the world.

However, according to specialists, certain aspects still need to be refined in the context of integration.

Dr. Reinaldo Sánchez Porro, a professor at the University of Havana, commented to Granma, "In many cases there is a political will to attain greater integration, but there is a lack of economic complementarity – apart from oil producing countries – largely on account of agricultural export economies selling commercial crops and raw materials on similar markets, an inheritance of colonial structures, in which only South Africa, with its larger industrial development, has the capacity to convert itself into a new center, in accordance with the rules of the dominant market economy."

While during its last 50 years of the existence, the OAU/AU has been able to revert to a large extent the sad reality of the continent in the 1960’s and 70’s (when the majority of African nations became independent), work is still needed in the sectors of education and health, as well as in the social and infrastructural context.

Unfortunately, epidemics, famine and ethnic-religious confrontations are still recurrent images of Africa. There is even a new threat of terrorism hovering over the region, above all in the Sahel area.

Neither is foreign domination a mere phantom, with a number of political leaders confirming the intense political pressure exercised by the International Monetary Fund and its neoliberal policies.

During a recent visit to Cuba, Wynter Kabimba, secretary general of the governing Patriotic Front of Zambia, affirmed to this reporter, "We are currently confronting the phenomenon of globalization, which determines the world economic order and has converted the planet into a village in which the ‘partners’ have unequal conditions."

Kabimba, also Minister of Justice, emphasized that the ideal for Africa, "Is to reconstruct this dominant economic order so that it gains in social justice."

The African nations are still victims of the expropriation of resources such as water, oil and uranium, among other minerals. "Today, we live in a world characterized by injustice, in which the powerful nations have the authority to decide how to access the natural resources of less developed countries and the price they are going to pay for them. A world in which the rich are becoming constantly richer, and the poor, poorer," he stated.

But the African Union is conscious of the challenges it faces and its 21st Summit of Heads of State and Government in the Ethiopian capital addressed common strategies and solutions.

Cuba and Africa, twinned by history

• RELATIONS between Cuba and Africa date back to the Spanish colonial era, when the first cargoes of slaves began to arrive in the Americas and Cuba. Since then, its culture has become ours.

With the rise of independence movements and the struggles against the apartheid regime in South Africa, the blood of both peoples was linked for ever.

Hundreds of Cuban cooperative health, educational and sports personnel are currently working in African countries, while students from the continent are training as professionals in Cuban universities.

In the last three annual high level meetings of the African Union, resolutions were passed demanding an immediate end to the U.S. economic, financial and commercial blockade imposed on Cuba since 1962.

At the same time, many AU nations have called upon the U.S. government to release the Cuban anti-terrorist fighters from their unjust incarceration in that country.