“The Accidental Ecowas
& AU Citizen”:
Hot Issues on the AU needing popular advocacy (I) – or Travelling Cheaply in Africa, & Southern Sudan
By E.K.Bensah Jr
Given the untimely passing of Qaddafi, it is all-too predictable to
write more column inches about the man and his works for Africa. Suffice-to-say
if Africa had a more vivacious media than we like to think we have, then media
practitioners should have been making more noise about the manner in which his
body was dragged through the streets of Sirte, and how the distribution of
footage of his bloodied body worldwide shattered to smithereens any sense of
decency the media is supposed to have – anywhere.
That notwithstanding, today I want to focus on equally-important
issues that have lost their way off the radar of mainstream news.
Travelling
cheaper in Africa?
For the
longest time, travelling throughout Africa has been a hellish affair, what with
never-falling cost of air tickets and entry of new airlines. Take the case of
travelling throughout the sub-region, where the average cost of a ticket is
around 500USD. This absolutely-unacceptable situation is made all the more
painful by the fact that despite the increasing assertiveness of the
eight-AU-recognised regional economic communities (ECOWAS; CENSAD; Arab Magreb
Union; SADC; COMESA; ECCAS; East African Community; and IGAD), there are
virtually no “regional carriers” that represent the “power” of the RECs.
It seems forever that ECOWAS has been talking about “ECOAIR”, which would be the carrier for
the ECOWAS sub-region. We all know that it has not happened. There is a glimmer
of hope that ECOWAS will make some headway on the viability of air transport—as
per the meeting it is holding as I write this—but results are likely to be very
slow in coming.
The
meeting in question is attended by air transport
experts and Chief Executive Officers of airlines from all the 15 ECOWAS Member
States, with the objective of discussing “measures of creating an enabling
environment conducive for viable, efficient, affordable and sustainable air
transport industry in the West Africa sub region.” While this is encouraging,
it looks like the real nettlesome challenge about travelling cheaply in West
Africa has everything to do with air fuel costs.
To this
end, in August, the 33-member Association of
African Airlines (AFRAA) resolved to work on the project whose aim is to lower
fuel costs for Africa, by jointly purchasing fuel. With only 33 members of the
association,however, I wonder whether it is not high-time the AU is lobbied to
join and help subsidise and operationalise this project?
Whither the future of CEN-SAD?
The Community of Sahel-Saharan
States was established in 1998 by the late Colonel Qaddafi. After the
rationalization of the regional economic communities in 2006, it became an
AU-REC – that is one of the eight RECs mandated and recognized by the African
Union. It has twenty-eight members, and Ghana is a member.
Despite many meetings that had
taken place and a fully-functioning website on http://www.censad.org,
the uprising that started in Libya in March threw a huge spanner in the works
of the organisation, effectively throwing the regional grouping out of sync
with the other RECs at its base in Tripoli. Regrettably, the conspicuous
absence of the African Union itself on the future of CENSAD has not helped
dispel the notion that the AU is nothing more than a “toothless” bulldog.
The passing of Qaddafi will
effectively take the wind out of the sails of CENSAD, probably throwing all the
good work – including the Great Green Wall being built along the sub-region to
protect the region from climate change; as well as the establishment of a
free-trade area of ECOWAS-UEMOA-CENSAD/ECOWAS-CENSAD/ECCAS along the likes of
the SADC-COMESA-EAC tripartite free trade area, which was mooted in 2008.
Going forward, I would expect to
see the AU taking serious the need to engage the National Transitional Council
in Libya on their commitments to the African Union. This would include
discussions on Libya and where it stands on the establishment of the
AU-mandated and Tripoli-hosted African Investment Bank, as well as the state of
play of CEN-SAD, and how it can be factored into discussions of Africa’s
ongoing discussions over Africa’s integration.
South Sudan – which REC to belong to?
South
Sudan might have slipped off the radar of news—not because it is not important,
but other hot issues might naturally have tipped it off. Still, what has not
been making the rounds too much has been the regional economic community to
which South Sudan should belong. Given the location of that country, one cannot
take it for granted that they would necessarily want to go with their Northern
counterpart—and to the RECs is no exception.
There is
no mechanism that can predict that South Sudan will want to become member of
the East Africa Community or the IGAD. And what of COMESA? This is an important
debate that African media practitioners – aware of the utility and increasing
assertiveness of the RECs – might be ruminating over on the continent.
Although
there have been major developments around South Sudan and its membership of
some of these RECs, the point I am making here is about the absence of a debate
in much of the African media. Going forward, African media practitioners,
including here in Ghana, should move beyond the stage of talking about other AU
member states only when they’re, at best, embroiled in conflict and/or at
worst, are headline news over at the BBC!
You might
be happy to know that South Sudan was made a member of COMESA at the 15th
Comesa Heads of State and Government summit on 14th October in
Malawi. Furthermore, on 17 October, South
Sudan President General Salva Kiir confirmed that his country has started on
the application process to become a member of the East African Community (EAC).
In
2009, in his capacity as a “Do More Talk Less Ambassador” of the 42nd
Generation—an NGO that promotes and discusses Pan-Africanism--Emmanuel gave a series of lectures on the
role of ECOWAS and the AU in facilitating a Pan-African identity. Emmanuel
owns "Critiquing Regionalism" (http://www.critiquing-regionalism.org). Established in 2004 as an initiative
to respond to the dearth of knowledge on global regional integration
initiatives worldwide, this non-profit blog features regional integration
initiatives on MERCOSUR/EU/Africa/Asia and many others. You can reach him on ekbensah@ekbensah.net / Mobile: 0268.687.653.
