The 13th Summit of the African Union Heads of State

Jul 6th, 2009 9:48 PM UTC
By Edith Jibunoh

The African Union Heads of State met in Sirte, Libya, from July 1st – 3rd in their bi-annual gathering in Sirte, Libya under the theme investing in agriculture for economic growth and food security. The meeting was once again overshadowed by discussions on advancing African governments towards a continental government.

African Sovereignty

At the Sirte meeting, African leaders advanced the process towards integration by agreeing to transform the African Union into an Authority. The Authority will however not come into effect until it is ratified by parliaments of the various African countries. The Authority will be headed by a President, a Vice President and eight secretaries who will collaborate with the various sectors within African governments on policy issues under their respective areas of concentration towards ensuring common positions on issues such as health, education agriculture, foreign trade and investment, among others. The AU Chairman, Mouammar Ghaddafi, the President of Libya, walked out of meetings discussing the authority and refused to continue leading the debate because countries such as Nigeria and much of eastern and southern Africa favor a gradual approach while Libya, Senegal and many other francophone African countries favored a quicker push towards a United States of Africa. In Sirte, summit leaders postponed the decision on powers for the new authority over defense, trade and foreign relations but agreed to establish a common defense policy and will incorporate NEPAD into the structure of the African Union.

Agriculture

African leaders agreed to set aside 10% of their annual budgets for the agriculture sector. African leaders noted that the only way to tackle the global food crisis and offer assistance to small farmers was to help them increase their production while generating the much needed income for the produce. This is a re-enforcement of the commitment made in the 2003 Maputo Declaration which also called for 10% of annual budgets to be allocated to agriculture. Despite this declaration six years ago, a 2007 AU/NEPAD survey found that 50% of African countries spent less than 5% of their national expenditure on agriculture development between 2003 and 2006, reflecting a decrease from 57% in 2003. Only Senegal, Ethiopia, Madagascar, Mali, Niger, Malawi, Zimbabwe and Comoros were found to be spending more than 10% of their budgets between 2003 and 2006.

Sudan and the ICC

African leaders decided not to accept the decision of the International Criminal Court to indict the Sudanese President, President Al Bashir and will refuse to extradite Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir to stand trial for genocide. The ICC has issued an arrest warrant for Al-Bashir over genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan. The only country that did not agree with the decision of the AU was Botswana and they used the opportunity of the meeting in Sirte to reaffirm their commitment to the Rome Statute on the ICC, and promised to fully cooperate with them in the arrest and transfer of Bashir. President Khama of Botswana has previously stated that if given the opportunity, he would arrest Bashir and hand him over to the ICC. 30 African countries are State Parties to the Rome Statute.

-Edith Jibunoh

TAGS: Policy News