2024-02-17 10:09:09
Leaders of African Union (AU) member countries opened a two-day summit in Addis Ababa on Saturday at a time when coups, conflicts and political crises threaten to tarnish the continent’s development.
Sudan is “in flames”, “Somalia still subject to the jihadist threat”, explained before the launch of the summit the president of the AU Commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat, also mentioning “a situation in the Horn of Africa”. “Africa which continues to worry”, the “perennial tensions in the east of the DRC”, the instability in Libya or even the “terrorist danger” in the Sahel.
“The resurgence of military coups, pre- and post-electoral violence, humanitarian crises linked to war and/or the effects of climate change, are all very great sources of concern for us,” a- he declared on Wednesday at the opening of the AU Executive Council bringing together the foreign ministers of member states.
These elements “seriously threaten to tarnish the signs of the emergence of Africa of which we are proud,” he noted.
Six of the 55 member states will be missing during the summit, suspended due to coups d’état, Gabon and Niger having joined Mali, Guinea, Sudan and Burkina Faso in the ranks of those banned in 2023.
On the sidelines of the meeting, Angolan President João Lourenço, AU mediator, brought together several African heads of state on Friday in Addis Ababa to discuss the situation in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), in the presence of Congolese President Félix Tshisekedi.
According to the latter’s services, discussions should continue on Saturday.
Since the end of 2021, the east of its country has once once more been in the grip of a conflict between the M23 rebellion – supported, according to numerous sources, by the Rwandan army – and the Congolese army associated in particular with armed groups known as “patriots”. “.
The AU summit is also taking place while Senegal, renowned as an island of stability and democracy on the continent, plunged into a crisis in early February triggered by President Macky Sall’s postponement of the presidential election, just three weeks before voting.
The decision was invalidated on Thursday by the Constitutional Court and on Friday, President Macky Sall committed to organizing the presidential election “as soon as possible”, giving hope for appeasement.
– “Resistance from member countries” –
Like many observers, Nina Wilén, director of the Africa program at the Egmont Institute for International Relations based in Brussels, “doubts that there will be strong decisions” during the summit.
“The resistance of member countries who do not want to see precedents that might harm their own interests” continues to prevent the AU from “making its voice heard”, she believes, and the organization has not had until here “very little influence on countries which have suffered recent coups”.
Witness to these divisions, the dissensions within the North Africa region between the two heavyweights Algeria and Morocco have long delayed the designation of the next president of the Union, a rotating position.
The heads of state will have to discuss during this summit “new working methods” to develop “an African position” during the G20 meetings, according to Paul-Simon Handy, regional director for East Africa at the Institute of security studies (ISS).
Member States must “be able to construct an African position if necessary between the biannual summits” of heads of state, traditional places of decision-making, he adds.
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is also due to speak from the podium. He is visiting Africa with stopovers in Egypt and Ethiopia – whose capital Addis Ababa hosts the AU headquarters – the two African countries having recently joined the Brics, a group of emerging countries initially bringing together Brazil, Russia, India , China and South Africa.
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