African Union

Members:

All African countries with the exception of Morocco

The African Union is basically the successor of the OAU founded on the 25.05.1963. All African states with the exception of Morocco are members, Morocco has left the Union to protest against the membership of Sahara. There is wide spread scepticism, whether the AU will be able to take a more efficient and important role in solving the many conflicts and problems of the African continent than the OAU. The chances are not to bad, since due to a different overall political picture Africa will not be missused as a remote battlefield for superpowers as it had happened in the second half of last century. The ambitions within the African Union are high, the aims are very closely related to those of the European community. But there is still some way to go and to bring the very different interests and the very different standards of living to a more or less balanced level will be the biggest problem of this community. The Abuja treaty signed in June 1991 included a roadmap to a Panafrican Union with customs union, free trade zone, common currency etc. and was inforced in some countries since 1994 under the name of African Economic Community AEC. More information can be found on the website of the OU.
In the following further regional cooperations will be mentioned, all heading for similar goals. On the agenda are harmonisation of law, customs tarifs as well as further regulations concerning freedom of movement and internal trade. In some cases a monetary union is also part of the agenda, and in West Africa this is already in place, installed by the French colonial power before the countries became independent. In fact it has to be admitted, that almost all regional cooperations have not significantly improved since their foundation, many of them are now in some sort of revitalisation phase, since many heads of state did meanwhile realize, that trying their own way will not make them close up to the rest of the world and that most of Africas problems can only be solved in at least regional cooperations.