Africa Union Day - what does it all mean?

Today, March 2nd, is Africa Union Day, which conjures up images of all Africa's people holding hands and singing songs of peace and harmony. Is this actually the case? Are Africa's people united, will they be united in the future, and were they ever united in the past?

A common misconception about the partition of Africa by European colonisers is that Africa was divided into about 50 smaller states. This is not a true reflection of what happened, however, as at the time there was no such thing as "Africa", but rather a scattering of kingdoms throughout the continent that had their own boundaries and areas of conflict.

What the colonial powers did was far worse than splitting a unified area. Instead they forced different tribes and kingdoms to fall under the same rule in places, and split tribes and kingdoms between rulers in others. This destroyed all existing social hierarchy, and caused massive rifts and conflict within the newly-created colonised states. Often these conflicts were encouraged and stimulated by the colonial powers, who used them top their advantage in keeping their "subjects" from taking out their frustrations on the colonisers. When these states then sought and gained Independence these conflicts became even more severe as different factions fought for control of state resources, and explains the constant civil war and violence between groups within the same African countries.

That was a very basic, summarised version of the partition of Africa and of course there is a lot of debate around the extent to which Africa was united or not before the slave trade and colonisation. So going back to today's Africa Union Day, we must again ask the question:

Is Africa united?
Judging by the political instability and cross-ethnic violence that is taking place in far too many countries in Africa, I would say definitely no. Ironically there seem to be far better relationships between countries that within countries. More importantly, does Africa need to become more united? Well, looking at the rise of the East Asian economies during the 80s and 90s, which happened in a very coordinated, collaborative process, I would say that Africa definitely would gain economically from working together more closely in its trade and industry. And it would certainly benefit from not having so much cultural and ethnic conflict, which would improve the majority of Africans' lives considerably.

So let's celebrate Africa's movement towards Unity, and do whatever we can to help to bring peace and stability to our neighbourhoods, communities, countries and, perhaps, our continent.

Brian

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