The journalist and black nationalist
leader Marcus Garvey wrote a poem about it. The reggae great Bob Marley sang
about it. And the Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi poured his oil wealth into
it. But none lived to see a United States of Africa.
This history of disappointed hopes will
provide the backdrop in early August when President Barack Obama hosts the
inaugural U.S.-Africa summit in Washington. Only a few of Africa's 54 leaders—including
Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe, who is still the target of U.S. sanctions—haven't
been invited.
The U.S. wants to discuss
continent-wide issues, such as security and terrorism, and to promote regional
initiatives, such as shared electricity. To stress the breadth of the meeting's
aims, Mr. Obama plans to meet with the African heads of state as a group, not
individually—a move that has ruffled some diplomatic feathers.
The vision of an impoverished continent
of countries coming together as one, flexing its muscle in geopolitics and the
global economy, has long enticed activists, poets and politicians. But today's
Africa remains divided, largely along hastily drawn colonial-era borders.
The question now is whether the
still-remote idea of political unity can find new life in the more modest goal
of an integrated economic community.
The obstacles are formidable. Congolese
women who trade eggs can't cross borders without giving away part of their load
to officials and facing threats of sexual assault, according to a 2012 World
Bank report; South Africa has feuded with Nigeria and Kenya over visa rules for
their citizens; and a territorial row between Malawi and Tanzania over a lake
separating them has hampered oil exploration.
"They hold hands, kiss each other—sometimes
even shed tears," says one senior bank official who has attended
pan-Africa summits in which leaders rhapsodize about fused economic futures.
"Monday morning, there's nothing. It's all forgotten."
Some Africa experts warn that the Obama
administration's effort to deal with the continent as a whole may be
counterproductive, both diplomatically and strategically. "It's uniquely
American. It's different. It's also high-risk," says Stephen Hayes,
president of the Corporate Council on Africa, a Washington, D.C., trade
organization.
The U.S. plays down such concerns. Mr.
Obama will set aside "lots of time for the leaders during the
summit," Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Linda
Thomas-Greenfield said earlier this month, adding that protocol and security
would be handled in a way that shows "respect for African leaders."
The more substantive question is
whether this is the best approach for promoting U.S. interests on the
continent. Several U.S. competitors have focused more on the immediate needs of
individual African states than on the long-term possibilities of a united
continent.
China, which devotes half of its $14.41
billion aid budget to the continent, regularly hosts individual African heads
of state. At an Africa summit hosted by Japan in Tokyo in June, Prime Minister
Shinzo Abe held 15- to 20-minute meetings with each leader, according to two
Japanese diplomats in South Africa.
Historically, a united Africa has been
more of an imaginative leap than a realistic prospect. Africa is larger than
the U.S., China, India, Japan and Europe combined. The 5,000 miles of territory
stretching from Tangier in the north to Cape Town in the south are home to more
than a billion people, speaking more than 2,000 languages.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the leading
advocates for a united Africa have been romantics, visionaries or both. In his
1924 poem, "Hail! United States of Africa," Marcus Garvey saw unity
as a way to liberate Africans from foreign repression. He tapped himself as
"Provisional President of Africa," according to Colin Grant, the
author of a biography of Garvey.
That dream was still alive in 1979,
when Bob Marley released "Africa Unite," singing, "How good and
how pleasant it would be before God and man/ To see the unification of all
Africans."
As colonialism came to an end after
World War II, many of Africa's new leaders argued that the continent's economic
and social development required political unity. At a 1963 summit of African
leaders, Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of newly independent Ghana, warned
that if they "let this grand and historic opportunity slip by, then we
shall give way to greater dissension and division among us, for which the
people of Africa will never forgive us."
Perhaps the most vocal proponent of
African unity was Libya's Col. Gadhafi. About 10 months before he was
overthrown and slain in 2011, the dictator told an audience in Senegal that
Africa should have a single navy to combat piracy. He also argued for a single
African currency and lobbied for a united government (to be based in Libya).
Gadhafi won endorsements for a U.S. of
Africa by supporting cash-strapped African leaders. He also picked up 15% of
the African Union's overall membership dues, according to the Center for
Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank. (The AU didn't
respond to questions about Libya's financial contributions.)
At a 1991 meeting in Nigeria, African
leaders did agree to unite the continent's smaller regional trading blocs. The
treaty, adopted a few years later, set out a road map for creating free-trade
zones, a continental customs union and ultimately a single currency for one
massive market by 2028.
But Gadhafi had even bolder ambitions
and pressured a group of African leaders, meeting in Libya in 2005, to set a
deadline of 2015 for creating a government for a U.S. of Africa. Ugandan
President Yoweri Museveni, who headed this effort at political federation,
later shifted his stance, backing economic integration instead, according to
his spokesman, Ofwono Opondo.
Foreign manufacturers have scant
incentive to invest in Africa's bite-sized economies when their suppliers can't
easily move goods across borders. East Africa's biggest economy, Kenya, is
smaller than that of Madison, Wis., according to the Brookings Institution, a
Washington think tank.
And because most African economies sell
a lot of raw commodities and manufacture very little, they don't buy much from
each other either. Intra-Africa trade amounts to just 12% of the continent's
total trade, the AU says. In Europe, it is 60%; in North America, it is 40%.
Still, signs of integration are slowly
surfacing and may help spur further growth. In West Africa, eight countries
maintain a common currency plus a central bank; in Central Africa, six more do
the same. East Africans can now travel within the region using only their
national identity cards. East and southern African leaders aim to establish a
customs-free trade zone this year.
The U.S.-Africa summit is likely to
reinforce what some experts say has become central to Africa's future: Unity is
no longer about ideology but economics. "Establish the veins through
which the economy's lifeblood will flow," says Jakkie Cilliers, executive
director of the Institute for Security Studies, a Pretoria think tank.
"No one leader can push African
integration. Those days are gone—and they should be gone."
By PETER WONACOTT
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