The African Union’s three-day retreat began on Tuesday at Zimbali Lodge north of Durban amid calls to resolve the continent’s conflicts and to further the aims of the AU.
The three-day AU foreign ministers’ retreat and executive council, which South African Foreign Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma described in her opening speech as a ”brainstorming session”, is being held in preparation for the upcoming AU summit of heads of state and government scheduled for Accra, Ghana, in July.
Opening the retreat, attended by 52 foreign ministers from Africa, Dlamini-Zuma said: ”Our collective responsibility is to bring peace to our continent. Indeed, where there are problems we must feel the pain more.”
She said the priority of the former Organisation of African Unity was eliminating colonialism and apartheid. ”They bequeathed to our generation a liberated continent.”
She said delegates would ”debate freely and frankly” the issues that drive the integration of the continent.
She said the AU needed to address the fact that Africa is ”marginalised internationally” and would have to debate the investment in the continent’s resources to improve the well-being of its citizens.
Ghanaian Foreign Minister Nana Akufo-Addo, who is also the chairperson of the executive council of the AU, said the retreat would bolster ideas on how to bring about a ”full economic union eventually leading to the United States of Africa”.
He reminded delegates that the AU assembly had decided at its last meeting in January in Addis Ababa that it would devote the Accra summit to the establishment of ”a union government, its direction and its structure”.
He said the ”brainstorming” by delegates at the retreat would ”determine for a generation the future direction of our continent”.
He said member states would need to develop a common understanding of integration among AU members, as well as the constraints of such integration.
”Today there is growing recognition among us of the need to provide the AU with a stronger continental machinery in order to work on agreed strategic areas of focus.”
He said the establishment of an AU government ”is not in doubt”, but when it would arise was debatable. ”These are the weighty matters on our agenda for the retreat.”
Akufo-Addo said: ”The eyes of an embattled continent, determined to escape its shameful legacy of underdevelopment and gain its rightful dignified place in the ordering of the universe, are on us.”
No binding decisions will be made at the retreat, but discussion and thoughts at the three-day meeting are expected to have a major influence on the Accra summit in Ghana.
Following the opening speeches, the retreat was closed to the media. — Sapa