Until the AU can fund a much greater share of its own agenda and use Africa’s financial institutions more strategically, its agency will remain constrained. (HRW)
For all the invocation of African solutions to African problems, a harder question remains: how much agency does the African Union (AU) really possess? Agency, in the deepest developmental sense, is the power to set priorities, command the means to pursue them, and act without excessive dependence on others. By that measure, the AU’s central challenge comes sharply into view: no institution can fully shape its destiny if it cannot reliably finance it.
At its fullest, agency means more than aspiration. It is the ability of an institution to understand what is required to achieve its objectives and to act without being wholly vulnerable to external pressures or shocks. It rests on a few essential foundations: autonomy, sound governance, clear goals, the means to pursue them and, above all, the financial capacity to deliver.
Apply that test to the African Union. The AU has a formal governance structure that has evolved over time. Its predecessor, the Organization of African Unity, was founded in Addis Ababa in 1963. The transition from the OAU to the African Union, formally launched in 2002, was meant to create a more effective continental body, better equipped to advance economic integration, peace and security, and Africa’s voice in global affairs. The reform push that gathered pace after the Kigali summit in 2016, and through President Paul Kagame’s reform report presented in 2017, sought to sharpen priorities, strengthen institutional effectiveness and align the Union more closely with its core continental mandate.
The Union also has rules and procedures. From its principal organs to its specialised and semi-autonomous bodies, its institutional framework is broadly defined. The election of leaders, internal working methods and principles of regional representation are all set out. In that respect, the AU has the attributes of a modern multilateral institution: orderly, structured and predictable in the conduct of its business.
Where the AU still falls short is in financing its ambitions. More than six decades after the founding of the OAU, the Union remains heavily dependent on external funding. The approved 2024 AU budget is about US$605.8 million. Of that, member states’ assessed contributions were capped at US$200 million, while international partners were expected to provide roughly US$370.1 million; the remainder came from African institutions, trust funds and other smaller sources. In effect, assessed contributions cover only about one-third of the total budget, while external partners finance roughly 61%. That is more than an accounting problem. It is a structural constraint on agency. A continental institution that cannot reliably fund its priorities cannot fully control them.
That imbalance should force a more uncomfortable question: can the AU credibly drive Agenda 2063 at full speed while so much of its financing comes from outside the continent? Strategic ambition requires predictable resources. Without them, targets become harder to sequence, delivery becomes harder to sustain and ownership becomes harder to assert.
In principle, there is nothing objectionable about external partners supporting initiatives that the AU cannot yet finance on its own, especially where global public goods or cross-border challenges with wider international implications are concerned. That is, after all, part of the logic of international cooperation and of the mandates of multilateral institutions such as the United Nations. But the long-term work of building a resilient, coherent and competitive Africa cannot rest indefinitely on outside financing. That responsibility must ultimately be borne by African member states themselves.
The inability to finance its own priorities inevitably weakens the AU’s autonomy. Even when formal decision-making remains in African hands, heavy dependence on external funding can narrow room for manoeuvre, shape incentives and skew attention towards priorities that attract outside support. One does not easily bite the hand that feeds it. That, ultimately, is the heart of the challenge to the AU’s agency in African development.
The AU’s agency, and especially its financial independence, must therefore be strengthened. In my view, African member states should, at a minimum, meet, and ultimately surpass, the Union’s own financing benchmarks: full coverage of the operational budget, most programme costs and a meaningful share of peace support operations. That will require a mix of stricter compliance with assessed contributions, stronger enforcement of payment obligations and fuller implementation of the 0.2% levy on eligible imports adopted in Kigali in 2016. External funding, by contrast, should be concentrated in areas that genuinely serve international cooperation and global public goods, including disease surveillance, climate resilience and collective security efforts on land and at sea.
Strengthening AU agency will also require a more strategic relationship with the African Development Bank (AfDB), the continent’s premier development finance institution. The point is not that the AU should direct the bank politically, but that African member states, as its core regional shareholders, should use their voice within the bank’s governance structures to encourage greater investment in the infrastructure and economic linkages needed for continental integration. The AfDB already places regional integration at the heart of its strategy through cross-border infrastructure, trade and investment facilitation, financial integration and support for implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).
Closer alignment between AU priorities and AfDB financing would help build the transport links, energy systems and market connections that reduce fragmentation and expand intra-African trade. A more deliberate orientation of AfDB resources towards continental integration would therefore strengthen the AU’s agency in driving Africa’s development agenda.
The African Union has the institutional form, legal framework and political ambition of a continental body capable of helping shape Africa’s future. But agency is not measured by aspiration alone. It is measured by the capacity to finance priorities, defend autonomy and align institutions behind a coherent development project. Until the AU can fund a much greater share of its own agenda and use Africa’s financial institutions more strategically, its agency will remain constrained. In the end, the real test of African agency is not what African states declare, but what they are prepared to finance together.
Anthony Ohemeng-Boamah is an expert in African development and socioeconomic transformation.