African Leaders end summit, pledge commitment to better Africa

The leaders ended their 21st ordinary summit of the AU and the 50th anniversary of the receded  organisation of African Unity (OAU), pledging not to bequeath the burden of conflicts to the next generation of Africans.

During the summit, economic experts had urged action from the leaders in not only banishing conflict but in creating an economically sovereign continent. At the turn of the millennium, Africa’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was $600 billion. Today, it is $2.2 trillion. But adjusted for inflation, Africa’s GDP has doubled in 10 years while Sub-Sahara Africa’s economic size has now doubled. Burgeoning conflicts have, however, continued to take the steam away from the road to more economic progress.

Besides, about 14 million of the continent’s youth are entering the labour market each year and cannot find a decent job.

But even as the leaders rose yesterday and settled for a rapid response strategy for Africa’s conflict situations, in the absence of a full take off of the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA), they failed to take any meaningful action beyond the subsisting suspension of the military junta, which seized power from a democratically-elected government in Central African Republic (CAR) last march.

Majorly, the leaders resolved to address the root causes of conflicts, put an end to impunity and strengthen national and continental judicial institutions and accountability in line with collective responsibility to the principle of non-indifference.

They also raised an instrument to deal with the recurrent and emerging sources of conflict including piracy, narco-human trafficking, all forms of extremism, including terrorism, trans-national organised crime and missing no opportunity to push forward the agenda of conflict prevention, peace-making, peace support, national reconciliation and post-conflict reconstruction and development, among others.

Addressing the global media shortly after the closing ceremony, Chairperson of the AU Authority of Heads of State and Ethiopian Prime Minister, Hailemariam Dessalegn, said: “We (African leaders) should take care of our own business by ourselves. We should not be waiting for handouts. We will now take care of all our programmes (security, economic integration and trade) among others, ourselves”.

Referring specifically to the report submitted to the assembly by former Nigerian president, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, on unleashing Africa’s potential and finding alternative sources of funding, he added: “There is now a master-plan for infrastructure. We are not suggesting that we will not welcome support from our partners, but we must have our own mechanism for directing our march to progress”.

The summit resolutions, which were earlier read by the Chairperson of the AU Commission, Dr. Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, had referred the Obasanjo report to the Ministers of Finance of member-states for further inputs.