Milestones in the Stride from Pan-Africanism to the African Union
Compiled by Zekeriya Mohammed
INTRODUCTION
The quest for continental unity and integration has reached different milestones as exemplified by the historic Sirte
Declaration, the Adoption of the constitutive Act in Lome, Togo, and the Proclamation of the Union in Sirte, Libya, on 2 March 2001. Underlying all these achievements is the creation in Addis Ababa of the OAU on the 25th of May 1963. Thus, 25 May will be retained as Africa Day and continue to be commemorated
as such, while 2 March will be recognized as Africa Union Day.
1900: The first ever Pan-African Conference was held in London, The aim of the conference was to propagate the ideas of Pan-Africanism. Although there are many important figures in the early stages of the growth of pan-African ideas, the two dominant political figures in the first quarter of the 20th century were Dr. William E. Burghardt duBois and Mr. Marcus Aurelius Garvey.
1912: The First African National Congress was founded.
1919: The Second Pan-African Congress was held contemporaneously with the peace conference in Paris. Dr. William E. Burghardt duBois arrived (at the conference) determined 'to have Africa in some way voice its complaints to the world...' There were 57 representatives at the conference.
1920: Marcus Garvey founded his Negro Empire in New York, and summoned a large international convention, which he called the First Black Parliament.
1921: The Third Pan-African Congress was held in London and Brussels. Two sentences from the address of duBois to the Third Congress help to establish another of the emerging themes of Pan-Africanism: 'The beginning of wisdom in inter-racial contact is the establishment of political institutions among suppressed peoples. The habit of democracy must be made to encircle the world.'
1923: The fourth Pan-African Congress was held in London, England, and Lisbon, Portugal.
1927: The Fifth Pan-African Congress was held in New York. It was the last in a series of congresses directly led by Dr. duBois.
1937: The International African Service Bureau was formed as the successor to the International Friends of Abyssinia.
1940: After serving a long prison sentence, Garvey Died in London without ever having set foot in Africa.
1944: Thirteen active welfare, students' and political organizations came together to form the Pan-African Federation under the leadership of the International African Service Bureau.
October 1945: The Pan-African Federation convened the Six* Pan-African Congress in Manchester. For the first time it was predominantly a congress of Africa's young leaders. Chief among them were Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Jomo Kenyata of Kenya, Sierra Leon's redoubtable trade union leader, Wallace Johnson, Togo's poet, Dr. Raphael Armattoe. [*Some regard this the Fifth Congress ignoring the 1900 conference, and dating the congresses from their start with duBois' first in Paris in 1919.]
- Dr. Nkrumah organized the West African National Secretariat (WANS) at the Manchester Congress.
August 1946: WANS pledged itself to promote the concept of a West African Federation as an indispensable lever for the ultimate achievement of a United States of Africa.
15-22, April 1958: The Pan-African political movement came home with the First Conference of Independent African States held in Accra, Ghana.
29, April 1958: The UN Economic, Social and Cultural Council (ECOSOC) adopted its Resolution 671(XXV) to establish the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA).
15-24 June 1960: The Second Conference of Independent African States was held in Addis Ababa.
15 February 1961: ECA decided to divide Africa into four sub regions and to establish Sub-regional offices in North, West, and Central Africa under Resolution 23 (III) and Resolution 64 (IV) of March 3,1962.
22 May 1963: The first successful Summit of African Heads of State was opened in the modern Africa Hall with Emperor Haile Selassie firmly insisting on the importance of ratifying a charter during the current meeting.
---A new Ethiopian draft was merged with the Lagos draft to produce the Charter of the Organization of African Unity (OAU).
25 May 1963: The Charter was finally unanimously approved, amid scenes of great rejoicing and the Organization of African Unity (OAU) was established at Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, by 37 independent African nations.
3 June 1963: The Ghana-Guinea-Mali Union had been formally dissolved in an announcement made by President Sekou Toure of Guinea.
2-11, August 1963: The inaugural meeting of the Council of Ministers of the OAU was held in Dakar, Senegal.
25 September 1963: The Pan-African Movement for East, Central and Southern Africa (PAFMELSA) was disbanded by President Julius Nyrere of Tanzania and its chairman Dr. Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia.
1964: The African Development Bank was established with a view to promote regional integration of the continent.
July 1964: The First Assembly of the OAU Heads of State and Government met in Cairo, Egypt. Addis Ababa was chosen as the site for the Headquarters of the OAU. Guinea's Ambassador to the United Nations, Diallo Telli, was chosen as Administrative Secretary-General.
November 1965: The Union of Maghreb Countries (UMA) consisting of Algeria, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia had been formed. It was to be revitalized later in the 1980s.
May 1975: The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) was established encompassing sixteen W. African countries.
December 1976: The OAU Council of Ministers adopted the Kinshasa Declaration concerning the establishment of an African Economic Community.
July 1977: The OAU Heads of State and Government endorsed the Kinshasa Declaration in Libreville.
April 1980: The OAU Heads of State and government reaffirm their commitment to establish, by the year 2000, an African Economic Community in order to foster the economic, social and cultural integration of the continent through the Final Act of Lagos.
1981: The Preferential Trade Area for Eastern and Southern Africa (PTA) was established, which subsequently was formed into COMESA.
1983: The Central African Economic Community (CAEC) was established.
13 May 1988: The 25th anniversary of the OAU, at which time the OAU Heads of State and Government reaffirm their commitment and their determination to take the necessary steps to accelerate the establishment of the proposed African Economic Community.
July 1990: The Declaration on the "Political and Socio-Economic Situation in Africa and the Fundamental Changes Taking place in the World" was adopted at the 26th Ordinary Session of the Assembly of Heads of State and Government in Addis Ababa.
3 June 1991: The 27th Ordinary Session of OAU Summit passed the Treaty on Establishing the African Economic Community in Abuja (to be called for short: The Abuja Treaty).
June 1993: The Assembly of the OAU Heads of State and Government adopted the Cairo Declaration on the establishment with in the OAU, of a Mechanism for Conflict Prevention, Management and Resolution.
10 January 1994: The West Africa Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA), which comprise eight West African States (Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote d' Ivoire, Guinea- Bissau, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Togo) was created.
May 1994: The Abuja Treaty establishing the African Economic Community (AEC) entered into force.
23 May 1994: South Africa became the 53rd nation to be admitted to the Organization of African Unity.
April 1995: The African Regional Symposium on Telematics for Development was organized by ECA, ITU, UNESCO and International Development Research Center (IDRC).
3 May 1995: The twenty-first Meeting of ECA Conference of Ministers which consists of the 53 African Ministers of Social and Economic Development and Planning, adopted Resolution 795(XXX) entitled "Building Africa's Information Highway."
7 May 1996: The twenty-second meeting of ECA conference of Ministers held in Addis Ababa adopted Resolution 812 (XXXI) entitled "Implementation of the African Information Society Initiative" (AISI) which is an Action Framework to build Africa's Information and Communication Infrastructure.
1997: OAU members established the African Economic Community (AEC), which is envisioned as an African common market.
February 1998: A protocol on relations between the AEC and Regional Economic Communities (RECs) was signed.
1998: The OAU Heads of State and Government Summit was held at Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.
12-14 July 1999: The 35th Ordinary Session of the OAU Heads of State and Government was held in Algiers, Algeria.
July 1999: The OAU Heads of State and Government Summit in Algiers, Algeria
passed decisions to condemn unconstitutional changes of government.
8-9 Sept. 1999: The Fourth OAU Extra-ordinary Summit was held in Sirte, Libyan Arab Jamahiriya.
9 Sept. 99: The Sirte Declaration was adopted.
April 2000: South Summit was held in Havana, Cuba.
April 2000: The governments of six countries in West Africa, namely: The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone decided in Accra, Ghana, to work towards the establishment of a Common Central Bank and the use of a common currency
July 2000: Africa made a giant stride from the Abuja Treaty to the Constitutive Act of the African Union at the OAU Summit in Lome, Togo.
2 March 2001: The African Heads of State at the Extraordinary OAU Summit in Sirte, Libya declared the establishment of the African Union, based on the unanimous will of the member states of the OAU.
23 April 2001: South Africa deposited its instrument of ratification of the Constitutive Act of the African Union with the OAU General Secretariat and became the 35th member State to do so.
26 April 2001: Nigeria became the 36th Member State to deposit its instrument of ratification of the constitutive Act of the African Union.
26 May 2001: The depositing of the Instrument of ratification by Nigeria concluded the two-thirds requirement and the Constitutive Act entered into force.
3 July 2001, The Merger of Millennium Partnership for Africa's Recovery Program (MAP) and OMEGA was finalized as the New Africa Initiative (NAI).
9 July 2001: The OAU Secretary-General during the opening of the Lusaka Summit informed member states that the Constitutive Act had been signed by all OAU member states and had, to that date, been ratified by fifty-one countries.
--The Constitutive Act replaces the Charter of the OAU, however, the Charter was to remain operative for a
transitional period of one year (from 11 July 2001 to 10 July 2002), for the purpose of enabling the OAU/AEC to undertake the necessary measures regarding the devolution of assets and liabilities to the Union.
11 July 2001: The ‘New African Initiative’ (NAI), which represents a merger between the Millennium Partnership for Africa's Recovery Programme (MAP) and the OMEGA Plan, was unanimously adopted by the Lusaka Summit.
20 July 2001: The G8 adopted the Genoa, Plan for Africa in which they committed themselves to an effective partnership in implementing the key priorities of NEPAD.
23 October 2001, The policy framework of NAI was finalized as the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), at the first meeting of the Heads of State and Government Implementation Committee Meeting in Abuja, Nigeria.
- The Abuja Summit was attended by 9 Heads of State and Government.
- The Implementation Committee consists of 15 States with 3 per OAU region, and is chaired by President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria.
13 March 2002: The Seventy-fifth Ordinary Session of the Council of Ministers of the OAU was held in Addis Ababa. The Session had a task to deal with the nuts and bolts of the realization of the African Union, i.e., finalizing the draft rules of procedure and regulations of the major organs of the AU.
25-26 March 2002: The second meeting of the NEPAD Implementation Committee was held in Accra, Ghana, at which time the committee identified strategic issues, set up mechanisms for reviewing progress and reviewed progress in implementing past decisions.
3 May 2002: The Eminent Persons Advisory Panel (EPAP) on the transition to the African Union was inaugurated in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
8-10, July 2002: The Heads of State and Government of the Assembly of the African Union met for the inaugural session of the African Union in Durban, South Africa. Consequently President Thabo Mbeki became the first leader to preside over the new Union.
July 2002: The African Union was launched in Durban, South Africa, with the adoption of the draft texts of the four key organs, namely the Assembly, the Executive Council, the Permanent Representatives’ Committee and the Commission.
The OAU Heads of State and Government elaborated the decision they passed at Algiers in July 1999 at the Lome, Togo, to spell out the sanction mechanisms that may be applied if unconstitutional government change ever occurs.
September 2002: The World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) was held in Johannesburg, South Africa.
10 December 2002: The first Extraordinary Session of the Executive Council on the proposed amendments to the Constitutive Act of the African Union was successfully concluded after two days of deliberations in Tripoli, Libya Great Arab Jamahiriya.
---The Council also created a sixteen-member ad-hoc Ministerial Committee, drawn from the five regions of the continent with South Africa as chair, for the purpose of facilitating, strengthening, improving and coordinating the activities of the Union.
Up to January 2001, the OAU has convened 36 ordinary sessions of the Assembly of Heads of State and Government and 4 extraordinary sessions of the Assembly of Heads of State and Government. All previous OAU Summits mainly discussed
such issues as de-colonization, support for the liberation struggle of Southern Africa, opposition to foreign intervention in Africa, mediation of domestic conflicts and inter-state disputes and promotion of African economic development. They had passed a series of resolutions concerning the above issues.
Since the birth of the New South Africa, the OAU has been refocusing its focal point of the work from political issues to economic development.