If you want to make sense of the third African Union summit, follow the money.
The 40 heads of state gathered in Addis Ababa this week enthusiastically adopted a new vision and strategic plan defining the AU’s place in the continent.
But African leaders giggled when the new AU chairperson, Nigeria’s President Olusegun Obasanjo, asked for a 1 200% increase in the organisation’s current budget.
AU commission chairperson, former Mali president Alpha Oumar Konare, has said his plan will cost R3,6-billion a year for the next three years.
The budget for the AU last year was R260-million — of which the organisation has managed to collect only R72-million.
Leaders will meet again in November to decide how much to spend on the new road map and how to raise the money.
President Thabo Mbeki was adamant that they should not leave without first establishing a solidarity fund to at least kick-start the new process.
He noted that the commission — the AU’s permanent secretariat based in Addis Ababa — was 50% understaffed. ”We cannot have a situation where the chairman of the commission cannot even hire three people that he needs,” said Mbeki.
South Africa won the big prize up for grabs at the summit — the Pan African Parliament (PAP) — but, ironically, will have to pick up the bill for the trophy.
PAP speaker Gertrude Mongella of Tanzania told the foreign ministers she needed R165-million to get the PAP properly under way.
Told to ”go back and cut to the bone”, she produced a figure of R100-million. At this price, member states would have to pay the daily allowances and travel costs of the five MPs they send to the PAP. The fear is this might be a financial deterrent to small states.
In the event, no budget was decided and member states aspiring to host the major organs of the AU were told that for the time being they would have to pick up the tab for these.
It will be five years at least — more likely a decade — before individual African legal structures are sufficiently aligned to enable the PAP to enact any regulations.
Nevertheless, South Africa has identified the PAP as the most important forum, next to the summit itself, for debating issues that go to the heart of the African condition.
Another strategic South African call, to plumb for a heavyweight position on the African Peace and Security Council (APSC) rather than use up favours getting people into the commission, has been vindicated at this summit.
Peace and security issues eclipsed talk on the new vision. When the AU finally gets round to putting whatever money it can raise where its mouth is, the APSC will be allocated at least a third of the annual budget.