Issue No. 118

The African Union's Slide into Irrelevance

Earlier this month, dozens of heads of state and government gathered in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, for the 39th Ordinary Session of the Assembly of the African Union (AU). The theme of this summit prioritised water security and sanitation, discussing various ways to address these issues amid the unrelenting climate crisis. A worthy subject, no doubt, but the geopolitical backdrop of the summit remains unremittingly grim. Taking place in Addis —amid war looking ever more likely in Tigray —the gathering of leaders again served to uncomfortably emphasise the decline of the AU.

Plenty of ink has been spilt in recent months writing about the 'new world order'; the anarchic nature of Trump's foreign policy, the return of the 'sphere of influence', the hard-power and kleptocratic nature of political dealings, and more besides. More often than not, such commentary is accompanied by the famous paraphrasing of Italian political theorist Antonio Gramsci, who wrote, "The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear." Much of the attention has focused on the vying great powers; the decline of Pax Americana and the rise of China, and the 'morbid symptoms' appearing in today's interregnum, be it war or US-foisted regime-change. 'Traditional' geopolitics-- or at least the facade of Pax Americana and the UN-based international order-- has fallen away, increasingly replaced by an open declaration that no rules ever underpinned the global systems, with cash and coercion the new explicit rulers.

But where does this leave the AU? For some time now, the continent's premier multilateral organisation has struggled to live up to the ideals it established in its founding documents. Beset by financial, architectural, and most importantly, political issues, the latest summit should serve as a stark wake-up call to arrest the AU's slide into irrelevancy. The Horn of Africa, as well as the Sahel, is facing a confluence of spiralling internal conflict, humanitarian crises, and a collapse of governance-- all turbocharged by the meddling from the Gulf and beyond.

Intended to break from the non-intervention doctrine of the post-colonial Organisation of African Unity (OAU), the AU's founding tenets were deeply principled, such as Article 4(h) of the Constitutive Act, which allows intervention in the context of genocide and war crimes. In practice, however, member states continue to extol sovereignty before all else, with a raft of countries anathemic to any scrutiny or criticism from the African Union and other multilaterals. Here, the issue of Addis hosting the AU is particularly pertinent, with the commission under the stewardship of Moussa Faki drawing repeated criticism for shirking its duties to intervene in the Tigray war, and since 2022, uphold the Pretoria agreement. Even last month, the body was rebuked by Ethiopia after it offered to mediate between Ethiopia, Eritrea and Mekelle, firmly told to stay in its lane. With the AU headquarters in Addis and dependent on the Ethiopian government's goodwill, the question remains whether the body can meaningfully challenge the often wayward regime.

Another criticism levelled at the AU relates to its ham-fisted response to the spate of coups since 2020, concentrated in the Sahel. While the AU may have suspended nearly a dozen countries in the past five-and-a-half years, it has comprehensively failed to steer any country back towards constitutional and civilian rule. Most recently, Madagascar was suspended in October after President Andry Rajoelina was ousted amidst widespread youth protests over corruption and poverty. Ironically, though, the AU's zero-tolerance policy to coups further reveals its inability to tackle poor governance. Warning signs of a retrenchment of democratic principles, massive corruption, and a slide in living standards had been apparent for some time, yet a contradictory approach from the AU in the months before October, followed by the immediate suspension, reflected hardly a subtle touch. Indeed, in many ways, the AU has degenerated into an intergovernmental club of incumbents, structurally ill-disciplined to police political decay that often precedes military intervention.

Moreover, across the continent, almost everything up to a coup is tolerated, with ruling administrations routinely amending their constitutions and ploughing ahead with blatant electoral manipulation. In the Horn of Africa alone this year, rulers in South Sudan, Ethiopia, and Somalia are all seeking to gerrymander their re-elections, with the AU largely immobile —even as these actions foment conflict and greater instability. Part of this is related to the limited weapons in the multilateral's arsenal, but in a young continent so often let down by militarised or geriatric rule, there remains an increasingly important space for an organisation to lobby for youth, not to be sucked into jostling for relevance in a race to the bottom.

But perhaps the most glaring evidence of the AU's struggles, however, relates to the entanglement of the Greater Horn of Africa in the tortured politics of the Middle East. In past years, the AU's rules-based nature has been subsumed by the tempting offers of cash and weapons from further afield, with the region becoming a bidding war among external forces. Narrow self-interests reign supreme, far above the notion of a collective good. And gone is the prospect that a conflict in one state can threaten all; there is money to be made in Sudan. Here, the AU has taken a backseat, abrogating its duty entirely in the world's largest conflict. It is well-known that the path to peace runs through the Arab capitals, but the AU has devolved into merely asking to be in the same room as the 'big beasts', with its various processes repeatedly degenerating into ineffectual mechanisms. Platitudes from African leaders about neutrality and urging a civilian-led process are all well and good, but actions speak louder than words-- and in the case of Sudan, many present in Addis earlier this month are culpable in the war's atrocities.

There are a host of reasons for the AU's stagnation, not least its complex architectural framework, which is too often fragmented and understaffed in critical peace and security sectors. To name just one, the often overlapping and contested nature of the relationship between the African Union and the Regional Economic Communities (RECs) fractures authority, rather than devolving it. In the Horn alone, the East African Community and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development have peace and security frameworks as well, and the competing mandates — rather than the cardinal rule of localisation — splinter rather than delegate authority. Nowhere is this clearer, though, than between the AU and the Southern African Development Community (SADC), which has repeatedly sought to limit the AU's role in the subregion. It has subsequently taken a contrasting position on issues such as the contested 2018 election in the Democratic Republic of Congo, while the broader multilateral architecture remains a patchwork rather than a coherent subsidiarity model.

And like nearly all multilaterals, perhaps barring Trump's Frankenstein 'Board of Peace,' the AU is struggling for cash as well. Member states are routinely late or limited in their payments, compelling the organisation to compete for external funding-- which, too, is diminishing. Of the roughly USD 814.3 million budget for the coming year, operational costs absorb a considerable USD 200 million, peace support operations are allotted USD 436.5 million, and programmes will receive USD 177.8 million. External donors are believed to cover between 64-72% of that total. As part of a raft of AU institutional reforms proposed by Rwandan President Paul Kagame in 2017, a 0.2% import levy was proposed, but uptake has been lacklustre. And without predictable and autonomous financing, the AU struggles to credibly enforce its own decisions-- epitomised, perhaps, by the continued underwriting of its peacekeeping operations in Somalia.

Finally, the election of former Djiboutian foreign minister Mahmoud Ali Youssouf to the position of African Union chair last year has proved somewhat contentious as well. Though nominally impartial, Youssouf's own stance on a range of issues has closely aligned with Djibouti's, most notably on Somaliland recognition. Structural problems may bedevil the AU, but without moral or institutional clarity, it will continue to remain sidelined and ineffectual. There are no easy solutions for these multi-fold crises, but a move towards some proactive solutions would be a start, not the sporadic actions that now dominate the body. It would do well to realise that its credibility is vested in political will, not communiques and that zero tolerance for coups cannot meaningfully coexist with tolerance for constitutional and electoral manipulation. But more broadly, the AU must decide whether it is a forum for incumbents or a guardian of the norms upon which it was established, and recognise that the young and politically conscious population will not indefinitely tolerate elite stagnation. And so, the grim irony of the 39th summit is that while it was convened under the theme of water security —an important and forward-looking issue —the political foundations required to address such existential challenges are frayed beyond recognition.

​The Horn Edition Team