United States Of Africa - But Everyone Wants To Be D.C.

By Cernig

The Guardian today has a tongue-in-cheek look at a movement which will still take decades to come to fruition but which has the backing of over 40 member states...the idea of a unified government for Africa.

The United States of Africa. It's one of few concrete plans African leaders agreed on as they struggled with issues of peacekeeping and political disputes at this week's continental summit.

One problem is, so many countries want to be Washington, D.C.

African leaders have been pushing for a continental government for years. And the plan continued to garner widespread support from the 40-odd delegations at the African Union summit that ended Saturday in Ethiopia's capital.

Yet even countries facing disputed elections and conflict at home were loath to suggest they would be anything but a leader of the group - even given the lighthearted question of what U.S. state they most resemble. Their responses highlight pecking order positioning that could keep a federally unified continent from ever becoming a reality.

``Sudan is something like Washington, D.C.,'' said Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem, Sudan's ambassador to the United Nations. ``Sudan is always a leader. So we want to have the White House of Africa, the Pentagon of Africa.''

Not so fast, Sudan.

Bamanga Tukur, a native of Nigeria and chairman of the AU's New Partnership for African Development, gave the honor to Ethiopia, the only African nation to have never been colonized.

``Ethiopia can be Washington,'' he said. As for his own, oil-rich nation, Tukur said: ``Nigeria can be Texas. Isn't that nice?''

But, Asked if Addis Ababa - the headquarters of the African Union - might someday become the African Beltway, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi was similarly cagey.

``That's in the future,'' he said.

Any such future is far away. Everyone agrees that a unified African government could take decades, and would require many nations to make drastic improvements to governance, infrastructure, poverty and education.

But the stickiest issue is power, so most leaders advocate a slow approach that will let them cement their regional ties and position, analysts say. Others - notably, formerly isolationist Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi and Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade - have called for quicker integration, which might favor their more established governments.

``Obviously, power politics are taking place throughout the continent,'' said Kenneth Mpyisi, director of the Institute for Security Studies, a think tank in Addis Ababa. ``We have various regional powers in different parts of the continent. ... They would obviously want to retain a certain amount of power in their sphere of influence.''

Personally, I think what's more likely to emerge is a supra-antional, rather than supernational, organisation. Think European Community style rather than U.S.A. style. But still, the very fact that this idea has momentum behind it despite the various powerplays and national differences means a lot for the African continent. It's a hope for the future at a time when much of Africa seems to need hope very much indeed.

It will be interesting to see which major powers back this coming transition wholeheartedly, which try to play it to their own advantage and which try to stop it dead in its tracks.