Almost all the African constitutions declare their adhesion to Pan Africanism in their preambles and many governments include a ministry of regional integration, and so underline the primacy of a project of African unity.

The result has been a surprising institutional dynamism that has been active in the continent from 1960 to the present day, with the creation of more than 200 varied groups. Regional integration has become an alternative to the failure of the nation-state and national development. Nevertheless, this enthusiasm stands in stark contrast with the slowness and weak level of bilateral and multilateral cooperation among African states.Even though important steps at continental level have been taken with the creation of the African Union (AU), the adoption of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) and the launching of the Africa Continental Free Trade Area, we are still far from having supranational projects.

Workers operate sewing machines at a garment factory at the Hawassa Industrial Park in southern Ethiopia.

The process of regional integration is a dead end due to its attachment to national sovereignty, the lack of political will, the lack of complementarity between interest and extrovert economies and, especially, because of the mistaken approach of free exchange based on imitating the European Union (EU). This shows how African integration is carried out from abroad – the US African growth and Opportunities Act (AGOA) or the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPA) of the EU – rather than by the continent itself.
In the face of such confusion, it is necessary to opt for a new approach to integration which takes into account the meso-economic aspects, in particular the strategies of advanced countries’ cultural areas, homogeneous and linguistic areas that are complementary and with overlapping customs unions, in fact, between two or more states, like a unifying osmosis; the creation of physical horizontal infrastructure to connect people and states; as well as the institutionalisation of trans-frontier migration and the above-mentioned popular economy.

Ethiopia. Delegates attend the opening session of the 33rd African Union (AU) Summit at the AU headquarters in Addis Ababa.

We have to move from ‘Armed Pan-Africanism’ or the economic colonisation of some countries by others, as we have seen and continue to see in the region of the Great Lakes, to ‘Cooperative Pan-Africanism’. It is necessary to foster the complementarity or cooperation / integration of African countries, to improve the social and economic conditions of peoples for the benefit of all. The curse of natural resources must be ended and transformed into its opposite: a blessing for them.
The union and/or the unity of African states on a continental scale, from plurality and diversity or decentralisation from within and outward federalism, makes up the background of the Pan-African ideal of Kwame Nkrumah, of Patrice Lumumba and Cheikh Anta Diop, which now concerns its recovery and concretisation in a globalised world.
Faced with the ineffectiveness of Pan-Africanism on the part of the neo-colonial state, imperfect and devoid of meaning, we must foster a new Pan-Africanism – neo Pan Africanism: to promote development and unity initiatives from below; for the people, who have found solutions to their problems of daily survival at the margins of the state and the international community and, finally, to tackle the challenges
of globalisation.

Participative democracy
In the early eighties and nineties, the processes of democratisation were imposed in Africa, replacing the faulty one-party systems, according to western criteria of liberal democracy and the market economy.
The equilibrium that can be reached today with these processes is controversial. In some cases we may speak of improvements – there is no going back – while in others things have ground to a halt due to fraud, electoral manipulation, patronage, restrictive electoral laws, constitutional changes, the authoritarian manipulation of institutions and pre and post-electoral violence. If we look on the bright side, we must emphasise the emergence of a civil society that is dynamic and in difficulty, the role of the media in the reawakening of public awareness and the counter-power role of opposition parties.

Elections in Malawi.

Nevertheless, the democratic process is fragile since it is located within an economic crisis. Political democratisation has not been accompanied by economic and social democratisation. Democracy has been limited to multi-partyism, formal electoral democracy, and to freedom of the press. Besides, in some countries ‘democracies’ have been established, formal democracies and secret dictatorships, ‘republican monarchies’, when children follow their parents as heads of state, or constitutional amendments, constitutional and institutional coups, to perpetuate their power.Only four countries have sound democratic institutions: South Africa, Botswana, Namibia and Mauritius, with significant progress in Senegal, Benin, Ghana and Ethiopia.
Solutions to the problems of development and democracy in Africa must not be identical to those adopted in Europe but must be inspired by traditional structures adapted to the situations of the peoples. It is time to replace the market with the social, to place economic development at the service of social development in line with the African culture of democracy and development: an inclusive democracy inspired by African values and lived in ubuntu (humanism).

Second independence
Africa needs a second independence or liberation since the first, being only imaginary, gave rise to neo-colonialism and internal colonialism.
According to Ali Mazrui, the Western model was imitated, instead of indigenising or adapting foreign values to local needs, cultural diversification or the defence of the national interest. In other words, Africa needs modernisation without becoming Westernised.

It is necessary to have a strategy of liberation and resistance against peripheral capitalism which has led to a truly ‘catastrophic economy in Africa’, which must define its own vision of the state, development, democracy and of unity and establish the societal project suitable for Africa.This new strategy must consist fundamentally in reconciling end-federation, internal federalism with exo-federation, external federalism, so as to create large spaces of political and economic sovereignty, with the aim of achieving internal development and reinforcing  African power within the international system.

Mbuyi Kabunda

After decades of distrust and hostility, the Somali brothers from Mogadishu, from the break-away state of Somaliland and from the federal states of Somalia are talking to each other.  Regional and international partners are trying to help. Meanwhile, Somalia’s parliament removed Prime Minister Hassan Ali Khaire from his post in a vote of no confidence  for failing to pave the way towards fully democratic elections.

For the first time since the former British colony of Somaliland broke away from Somalia after the overthrow of the dictator Siad Barre in 1991, the leaders of Somalia’s President  Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, nicknamed ‘Farmajo’ (a deformation of his father’s own nickname, “Formaggio” or cheese in Italian), and his Somaliland’s President Muse Bihi Abdi, held official talks in Djibouti on the last 14 June.

The president of Somalia Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo.

The ambition of the host, President Ismail Omar Guelleh and of the Ethiopian Prime Minister, Abyi Ahmed who attended also the meeting and who had brokered an informal face-to-face discussion between the two, in February was to have Farmajo and Bihi seated at a same table. In itself, the presence of both leaders in Djibouti was an achievement. Indeed, in 2019, the International Crisis Group think tank reminded in a report that the relationship had become extremely tense. During several rounds of talks between 2012 and 2015, both sides made some progress on practical issues of cooperation such as airspace management, but failed to close the gap on the Somaliland’s status and eventually the talks collapsed. There were clashes between Somaliland forces and those of the neighbouring semi-autonomous Puntland region of Somalia, in 2018.

The president of Somaliland H.E Musa Bihi Abdi

Conflicting interests from regional partners contributed to the deterioration of the situation. The Mogadishu-based Federal Government of Somalia (FGS) felt very upset after the Dubai-based DP World Company which operates the port of Berbera, in Somaliland, offered Ethiopia a stake in the harbour in 2018. The Mogadishu government claimed that such agreement was “a violation of its sovereignty”. At the same time, the Emirati company, which also manage the port of Bosaso in Puntland, was unlikely to welcome negotiations in which Somaliland could be pressed to yield decision-making power to Mogadishu on issues that might affect its interests.
Somaliland’s President Bihi called Somalia’s opposition to the Berbera deal a “declaration of war”.
The Horn of Africa has become a field for the confrontation of interests between the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia on one hand, and Qatar and Turkey on the other, like it happens in Libya. During the Covid 19 crisis, the Ukrainian air company Zet Avia which delivered weapons to the Libyan general Khalifa Haftar on behalf of the UAE, transported cargos of medicines to Somaliland and Puntland. Meanwhile, Qatar and Turkey which support the Tripoli government in Libya are backing the Mogadishu authorities.

Some positive developments occurred recently, however. The Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan wished to get involved in the detente process. Turkey’s ambassador in Mogadishu, Olgan Bekar who had carried out mediation efforts between Somaliland and Somalia also attended the Djibouti talks. This added to similar attempts from Ethiopia, Djibouti, Sweden and Switzerland. The foreign partners insisted that the defeat of Al Shabaab’s insurgency required Mogadishu and Hargeisa to share intelligence and pool resources.
All this contributed to ease the tensions and to create a momentum towards renewing negotiations. Other partners tried to consolidate the process by expressing their support. The list includes the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the European Union, the United Kingdom, the African Union Mission in Somalia, Belgium, Canada, China, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Uganda, the United States and the UN. No agenda was made public. Insiders say that the plan was to focus primarily on designing modalities for future dialogues rather than on the thorny question of statehood. Before the Djibouti meeting, President Bihi had indeed still declared that the Mogadishu authorities were the biggest challenge for Somaliland’s fight for recognition as an independent state.
One of the main outcomes of the meeting was the setting up of a joint ministerial committee tasked with spearheading dialogue between both sides. Somalia’s Interior minister Abdi Mohamed Subriye and Somaliland’s foreign affairs boss Yasin Hagi Mohamud were appointed as co-chairmen of this committee.

One week after the beginning of the talks, Djibouti declared that a “tremendous progress” had been made and that the delegates had discussed in a “warm and brotherly atmosphere” in presence of Djibouti’s Foreign Affairs minister Mahmoud Ali Youssouf and of the facilitation from the US and the EU.
The committee met from June 15-17. As part of the goodwill gesture, both parties agreed to refrain from acts that would otherwise impede negotiations and discussed confidence-building measures.
To narrow down the issues, both parties formed several subcommittees on humanitarian aid, investment, management of Somalia’s airspace and security matters.  Both sides also agreed that the Joint Ministerial Committee would resume talks to review the progress made by the subcommittees in early August.
Yet, while the thorny issue of Somaliland’s international recognition was not discussed, the Hargeisa authorities still maintain that the issue should form part of the agenda, ultimately.
Time will tell whether progress can be recorded on this sensitive issue. Yet, the first reactions about the Djibouti meeting were positive: Somalia’s Interior Minister, Abdi Mohamed Sabrie, said that his government was committed to have a “genuine dialogue” with Somaliland. According to the Foreign Minister of Somaliland, Yasin Faraton, the talks were “a step in the right direction”.

The former US ambassador in Ethiopia, David Shinn, now professor of international affairs at The George Washington University, in an interview with the Horn Tribune suggested that rather than total independence for Somaliland, which would not be agreed in the international arena, a possible compromise solution could be a confederated status for Somaliland whereby it would maintain considerable autonomy. In his view, the question of the recognition of Somaliland should be determined by the African Union. So far, the AU has shown reluctant since it seeks to avoid to open a pandora box. But the Somaliland case is a challenge for the organization since according to the AU’s principle of intangibility of borders inherited from colonization, Somaliland which was colonised by the British and Somalia which was an Italian colony, declared independence separately in 1960 before agreeing to form a single Somali Republic, were different states. At the same time, AU member states do not want secessionists in South-Western Cameroon, Cabinda or Katanga to use the precedent case of an internationally recognised independent Somaliland, to promote their cause.

The road of reconciliation is difficult. Both sides face the opposition of hardliners. In Mogadishu, President Farmajo’s speech at the Parliament was interrupted by loud whistling, boos and hisses when he declared that “President Bihi of Somaliland had accepted the talks But under Farmajo’s rule, the Federal Government of Somalia seems committed to improve its relations with all the other entities of the Somali community. On the 14 June, the FGS officially recognised the leader of the semi-autonomous Jubaland state, Ahmed Madobe after months of rising tensions and armed violence, following the re-election as president of this former warlord in August 2019 who had been boycotted by the federal government who had backed his rival. Such recognition should help to ease tensions with Kenya which backed Madobe and had escalated in March, when heavy fighting broke out near the Kenyan border between Somali troops and Jubbaland forces
The Federal Government which had faced criticism for engaging in disputes with federal states instead of focusing on the fight against Al-Shabaab, also invited heads of the various states to Mogadishu to discuss national elections. President Farmajo held virtual talks with the leaders of   Puntland, South West, Galmudug and Hirshabelle.and invited all of them and Madobe as well to Mogadishu to discuss elections and also security and economic issues.The move was appreciated by Senator Ilyas Ali Hassan, the foreign secretary of the Himilo-Qaran opposition party, which is led by former president Sheikh Sharif Ahmed. “The meeting is a good gesture”, he said.

Now, concerning the forthcoming elections, a number of issues remain to be solved. One contentious proposal is whether Somalia should continue with the clan-based system in elections. Puntland state, which declared autonomy in 1991 and Jubbaland are insisting that clans should not be used in the upcoming elections.
Another bone of contention is the date of the election. In principle, a new parliament has to be installed by end November 2020 and a presidential election is scheduled at the end of June 2021. President Farmajo has pledged to hold elections on time. But the chairperson of the National Independent Electoral Commission (NIEC), Halima Ismail Ibrahim, told the Lower House of the parliament that political differences, insecurity, flooding and COVID-19 have hampered the schedule and that the election could not take place as foreseen, reported the Voice of America on the last 28 June
According to Ibrahim, the necessary biometric registration imposed by the electoral law cannot be completed in time. She says that the purchase of registration equipment, the security of registration sites, the registration of voters and candidates and the establishment of the voters’ registry need more time and budget. In her view, at least 13 months are necessary to meet these conditions.

The main opposition coalition, the Forum for National Parties (FNP), which brings together six political parties, is outraged and has called on the electoral commission to resign for failing to hold the election on schedule. It has accused the NIEC of collaborating with the current government on term extension.
Nevertheless, some useful steps are taking place to mend the gap between the federal government and the regional states whose relations are extremely difficult. Progress was recorded with the signature of a badly needed cooperation security deal between Puntland and the neighbouring state of Galmadug as both entities are struggling to cope with an escalation of Al-Shabaab attacks. In April, Al-Shabaab militants launched attacks on the rather peaceful Puntland from Galmadug, during which they shot dead Nugal Governor Abdisalam Hassan Hersi in Garowe, the regional administrative capital of Puntland.Meanwhile, on July 25^th Somalia’s parliament removed Prime Minister Hassan Ali Khaire from his post in a vote of no confidence  for failing to pave the way towards fully democratic elections.  A whopping 170 of parliament’s 178 MPs backed the no confidence motion, and Khaire’s ouster was immediately endorsed by President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo, who had appointed him as prime minister in February 2017.

François Misser

Sixty years ago, seventeen African countries became independent. Enough time has gone by to take stock of the situation of the continent and, especially, to plan for the future.

In 1961, when African independence was beginning, the French agronomist René Dumont, the author, among other books, of The Hungry Future, denounced the mistaken path taken by African countries, especially because it imitated the western model of the state and of development. In their enthusiasm after recently gaining independence, the African elite and political intellectuals replied in unison: ‘The direction matters little; what is important is that we make a start’.
Since then, there has been a multiplicity of adjectives, mostly negative, used to describe the situation in the continent: Africa at a standstill, betrayed, strangled, tired of itself … to quote but a few of the views that sought to point out the failure of independence and its postcolonial elite. Nevertheless, despite all these Africa-disaster diagnoses, Africa is still there and challenges all the forecasts of its demise.

In this continent which is distinguished for its unity in diversity, Sylvie Brunel, a French economist, today speaks of three intertwined and overlapping images: ‘The Africa of chaos and misery’, ‘The Africa of exoticism’ and ‘The emerging Africa’ which is that of the last decade. The truth is that people now live better in Africa than they did a century ago, but also somewhat worse than sixty years ago.
Postcolonial African leaders set themselves their main objectives in building their nations: the nation state; economic and social development; the promotion of democracy, human rights and African unity. Six decades later, it is necessary to take stock regarding the achievement of these objectives. Fundamentally, we must try to respond to these questions: after sixty years of African independence, what sort of political and economic statement can we present? In what ways has it succeeded or failed? What is the outlook for the future of the continent?

Nation-building
In Africa, the juridical state has preceded the nation as a sociological phenomenon. This was the principal historical abuse by the colonial powers at the Conference of Berlin in 1884.
Due to its colonial origins, the African state was not conceived for development or democracy or for the promotion of human rights. It was, and still is, conceived as an instrument of domination and exploitation. Instead of transforming the colonial state inherited from colonisation, the post-colonial African nationalist governments recuperated and maintained it due to their obsession with the creation of the nation state and this caused them to fall into the trap of authoritarianism.

Kenya. Parliament buildings in the city centre of Nairobi.

The demands of national development and construction, both of which became national priorities, led the postcolonial elite to create strong centralised states by instituting, during the sixties and seventies, new instruments of dominion: the single party ethnocracy – whether by right or in fact – the ‘dictatorship of development’ or social development, by means of state capitalism and/or state socialism.
It was in this way that the new African leaders appropriated political and economic power and so became ‘new colonies’. The outcome has been a break between the state and society with different legitimacies.

Development in Africa
By maintaining the division of work established decades or centuries previously, the colonial pact remains in force, thanks to which the African continent occupies an important place in the world economy due to its raw materials and cheap labour.
Between 1960 and 1980, the developmentalist state, charged with the creation of the nation-state, considered the foundation of development, was instituted. The result was an investment in political and ideological aspects, to the detriment of economic development.

From 1980 to 2000, faced with the catastrophe generated by the previous model, a privatisation amendment was imposed – the Washington Consensus – which removed economic and social functions from the state, together with the conversion of the private sector and international trade into forces for development.
From the year 2000 until now, there has been an attempt to create a possible balance between the state and the market. The result has been an increase in internal and external deficits, structural unemployment and deterioration in the aspects of human development.

It is necessary to emphasise, during the six decades of independence, the lack of diversification in the African economies, de-industrialisation as well as little or no social investment, all factors that explain the persistence of underdevelopment in the continent.
In synthesis, we may explain poverty and underdevelopment in Africa as due to three combined crises: an organic crisis – the priority given to the construction of the nation or the nation-state to the detriment of other economic aspects; a structural crisis – continuing with colonial economies or with income based on raw materials or on mining; and an economic crisis – the consequences of the world crises due to the extreme vulnerability and extroversion of the African economies, apart from giving priority to a consumer society at the expense of a production society.It must be emphasised that for ten years African GDP has grown faster than that of the other continents, an average of circa 5%. But it is growth without development since it is based on economy rather than on structure.

At present, only eight countries are in a good economic situation: Botswana, Mauritius, The Seychelles, Kenya, South Africa, Namibia, Ghana and Ivory Coast. As the economist Carlos Lopes suggests, the development of Africa during the coming decades will take place within a synthesis of humanism, Pan Africanism, the combination of economic and social development and respect for the environment in opposition to the present ecocide model.
The coming decades should see the imposition of the democratisation of development whose axes will be the development ‘of the people’ – the promotion of human and social development, favouring education and health assistance; ‘with the people’ – promoting popular participation in favour of the majority; and ‘for the people’ – with a reduction of inequality and the promotion of social justice. Thus the conversion of the popular economy, whether social or assistential, which amounts to 40 to 50% of the GDP of Sub-Saharan Africa and 30% of that of North Africa, and 80% of jobs in many countries, into the development vector.

Mbuyi Kabunda