Sub-regional bodies hold the key to total African uinion

Accra, Dec. 18, GNA- Dr Vladimir Antwi-Danso, a Political Scientist, has called for the transformation of existing African Sub-regional groupings into pillars of an eventual continental union.

"Making integration and people's solidarity part of national plans would be the greatest catalyst to African unity." Dr Vladimir Antwi-Danso, a Senior Research Fellow at the Legon Centre for International Affairs, University of Ghana, Legon, made the remarks at the second day of a two-day annual Du Bois, Padmore, Nkrumah lecture series held at the WEB Du Bois Memorial Centre for Pan African Culture in Accra. He was speaking on the topic: "Trends of Pan-Africanism in Global Development."

The annual lecture serves as a forum that brings together pilgrims from Africa and the Diaspora to promote the ideals of Pan-Africanism between Diaspora and Continental Africans in the sustained pursuit of their shared aspirations and to encourage them to appreciate and to re-evaluate African cultural heritage and its relevance to the progressive movement of African societies.

Dr Antwi-Danso said integration of such sub-regional groupings had the potential to create organs of popular solidarity which would accelerate the pace of integration.

According to him, there had been several set backs to the dream of a united Africa citing instability on the continent caused by global systemic imbalances as a factor.

"The global liberal imperatives leave most economies weak and unable to yield to the collective ideal. It also makes integration a daunting task", he said.

Dr Antwi-Danso chastised some African leaders for stagnating the process for a united Africa describing them as greedy, selfish and 'short-termist minded'.

He expressed reservations for the 'protectionism' attitude of some African leaders adding the attitude was a hurdle to African integration. Dr Antwi-Danso described the several sub-regional groupings as "a spaghetti bowl of African integration" adding that though their efforts at regional stability and ensuring regional security were laudable, the efforts lacked the power to achieve the Pan-African agenda of a united Africa. Some of the sub-regional groupings he noted were Economic Community of West African States, West African Economic and Monetary Union, Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa Development and the Arab Maghreb Union that specifically works towards Northern African integration.

Dr Antwi-Danso said however that Africans needed to use trade as a common tool to unite and to bear the burden of globalisation. "Trade is common to all Africans. We must use it as a tool to unite," he said and added that an African integration was an inevitable need.

Africa needs to engineer a balance between the market and society to unleash creative potentials of private entrepreneurship without eroding the social bases of cooperation and international partnership, a Ghanaian Academic said on Friday.

"This, it seems, forms the basis for the New Partnership for Africa's Development."

Dr Antwi-Danso said Pan-Africanism had achieved a lot citing black consciousness and emancipation, human rights and dignity, attention drawn to equity in the international political economy as some examples of the achievements.