This book looks at the first ten years of the African Union. This is the second in a series of books that will be produced each year from annual conferences held on the multi-faceted issue of African liberation. The key themes of the book explore ways of improving the effectiveness of the African Union, fostering unity amongst African countries through entrenchment of pan-Africanism, and building ownership of the African Union by the African people and their communities. In addition, the thoughts of key figures of pan-Africanism and black emancipation, such as Sylvester Williams and Frantz Fanon, are re-positioned to even greater contemporary relevance. Through its promotion of Ethiopianism, pan-Africanism and the African renaissance, we trust that this book will add new interest and a fresh perspective to how Africans move forward together into a post-colonial era where policies and actions are determined by the united agency of liberated Africans the world over.

This book offers a comprehensive analysis of the African Union during the organization’s first ten years of existence. It takes the reader through the various intergovernmental processes that preceded and followed the establishment of the Union and through the workings of key organs such as the Assembly of Heads of State, the Council of Ministers, the Pan African Parliament and the Commission. The study argues that the African Union represented a rational choice of its member states, who saw it as a means to advancing their individual and collective preferences for liberation, peace and security, good governance and socio-economic development. It maintains that the African Union did not only make marked progress in a number of areas; the Union also established norms that had transformational effects on military and political elites at country and regional levels. However, like in most agent-principal relations, the autonomy of the Union was limited in many ways, and this affected the Union’s effectiveness in such areas as human and socio-economic development, as well as in sustaining peace support operations. At a more general level, the study argues that the African Union offers clear insights into integration as a multidimensional process that no single theoretical tradition can explain in a comprehensive manner. The author’s response to such a theoretical limitation is “fusionism”, an integrated approach that amalgamates various analytical traditions in order to provide a better explanation of the processes of international integration. The detailed analysis and bold proposals will undoubtedly make the study appealing not only to specialists in African Studies, but equally to a broader spectrum of international relations and development scholars.

This is the first edition of the Yearbook on the African Union. It is first and foremost an academic project that will provide an in-depth evaluation and analysis of the institution, its processes, and its engagements. Despite the increased agency in recent years of the African Union in general, and the AU Commission in particular, little is known – outside expert policy or niche academic circles – about the Union’s activities. This is the gap the Yearbook on the African Union wants to systematically bridge. It seeks to be a reference point for in-depth research, evidence-based policy-making and decision-making. Contributors are: Adekeye Adebajo, Habibu Yaya Bappah, Bruce Byiers, Annie Barbara Hazviyemurwi Chikwanha, Dawit Yohannes Wondemagegnehu, Katharina P.W. Döring, Jens Herpolsheimer, Jacob Lisakafu, Frank Mattheis, Henning Melber, Alphonse Muleefu, John N. Nkengasong, Edefe Ojomo, Awino Okech, Jamie Pring, Elizabeth Sidiropoulos, Tim Zajontz.

This book is a compilation of selected papers presented during the 8th Africa Institute of South Africa (AISA) Young Graduates and Scholars (AYGS) Conference held at the University of Johannesburg in the year 2014. The three-day conference dubbed, Africa at a Crossroads: Future prospects for Africa after 50 years of the Organisation of African Unity/African Union, voiced young graduates and scholars’ views on Africa’s future and developmental breakthroughs, as well as its challenges and opportunities. While the annual conference is a capacity building platform for young scientists, it provided a platform for participants to engage in critical dialogue about the African realities and possible, plausible and desirable future for the continent. The book thus provides a critical interrogation of the drivers of change in Africa moving forward, especially as the AU was busy churning out new ideas and mapping out a new vision for the next 50 years. Essentially the book provides insights on national systems of innovation, matrices on poverty, climate change and lastly a reflection on Africa’s position in global governance.

Examines and compares diplomatic practices and normative change in the African Union and ASEAN.

This work is an introduction to the origins, law and institutions of the African Union (AU). It examines the evolution, structures, legal standards and operational activities of this Pan-African organization, which replaced the Organization of African Unity (OAU) 10 years ago. Although the AU came into being in 2001, so far there is no comprehensive work which addresses the institution, its organs and structures, the scope of its operations, its legal framework and the normative standards underpinning its objectives and functions or those underlying the conventions, charters and protocols it has enacted or inherited from its predecessor, the OAU. It is the aim of this work to fill that void. It has been conceived as a manual, and not as a scholarly treatise, so as to serve as a basic introduction to the institutional and legal framework of the AU and its affiliated organizations. It is meant to offer a concise and clear picture of the nature and workings of a continental institution aimed not only at promoting peace and unity in Africa but also at ensuring human security, development, human rights protection and good governance for the peoples of Africa.

Fighting for Peace in Somalia provides the first comprehensive analysis of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), an operation deployed in 2007 to stabilize the country and defend its fledgling government from one of the world's deadliest militant organizations, Harakat al-Shabaab. The book's two parts provide a history of the mission from its genesis in an earlier, failed regional initiative in 2005 up to mid-2017, as well as an analysis of the mission's six most challenges, namely, logistics, security sector reform, civilian protection, strategic communications, stabilization, and developing a successful exit strategy. These issues are all central to the broader debates about how to design effective peace operations in Africa and beyond. AMISOM was remarkable in several respects: it would become the African Union's (AU) largest peace operation by a considerable margin deploying over 22,000 soldiers; it became the longest running mission under AU command and control, outlasting the nearest contender by over seven years; it also became the AU's most expensive operation, at its peak costing approximately US$1 billion per year; and, sadly, AMISOM became the AU's deadliest mission. Although often referred to as a peacekeeping operation, AMISOM's troops were given a range of daunting tasks that went well beyond the realm of peacekeeping, including VIP protection, war-fighting, counterinsurgency, stabilization, and state-building as well as supporting electoral processes and facilitating humanitarian assistance. Tana Forum Annual Book Launch 2019 Winner.

What happens when the international community simultaneously pursues peace and justice in response to ongoing conflicts? What are the effects of interventions by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on the wars in which the institution intervenes? Is holding perpetrators of mass atrocities accountable a help or hindrance to conflict resolution? This book offers an in-depth examination of the effects of interventions by the ICC on peace, justice and conflict processes. The 'peace versus justice' debate, wherein it is argued that the ICC has either positive or negative effects on 'peace', has spawned in response to the Court's propensity to intervene in conflicts as they still rage. This book is a response to, and a critical engagement with, this debate. Building on theoretical and analytical insights from the fields of conflict and peace studies, conflict resolution, and negotiation theory, the book develops a novel analytical framework to study the Court's effects on peace, justice, and conflict processes. This framework is applied to two cases: Libya and northern Uganda. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, the core of the book examines the empirical effects of the ICC on each case. The book also examines why the ICC has the effects that it does, delineating the relationship between the interests of states that refer situations to the Court and the ICC's institutional interests, arguing that the negotiation of these interests determines which side of a conflict the ICC targets and thus its effects on peace, justice, and conflict processes. While the effects of the ICC's interventions are ultimately and inevitably mixed, the book makes a unique contribution to the empirical record on ICC interventions and presents a novel and sophisticated means of studying, analyzing, and understanding the effects of the Court's interventions in Libya, northern Uganda - and beyond.