The United States of Africa is a proposed name for the concept of a federation of some or all of the 55 sovereign states of Africa.[1][2][3]
Former Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi, who was the 2009 Chairperson of the African Union (AU), advanced the idea of a United States of Africa at two regional African summits: in June 2007 in Conakry, Guinea,[4] and again in February 2009 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.[5] Gaddafi had previously pushed for the creation of the African Union at a summit in Lomé, Togo, in 2000.[6] Having described the AU as a failure on a number of occasions, Gaddafi asserted that only a true pan-African state can provide stability and wealth to Africa.
A number of senior AU members also support the proposed federation, believing that it could bring peace to a 'new' Africa.[7] Alpha Oumar Konaré, former President of Mali and former Chairperson of the African Union Commission, spoke in favour of the concept at the commemoration of Africa Day, on May 25, 2006.[8]
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The "United States of Africa" was mentioned first by Marcus Garvey in his poem 'Hail, United States of Africa' in 1924. Garvey's ideas deeply influenced the birth of the Pan-Africanist movement which culminated in 1945 with the Fifth Pan-African Congress in Manchester, United Kingdom, attended by W. E. B. Du Bois, Patrice Lumumba, George Padmore, Jomo Kenyatta, and Kwame Nkrumah.[1] Later, Nkrumah and Haile Selassie (among many others) took the idea forward to form the 37 nation Organisation of African Unity, the forerunner of today's African Union.[9]
The idea of a multinational unifying African state is seen by the French publication Le Monde diplomatique as a successor to the medieval African empires: the Ethiopian Empire, the Ghana Empire, the Mali Empire, the Songhai Empire, the Benin Empire, the Kanem Empire, and other historic nation states.[10]
From these origins, and as a result of the more recent colonialism, Africa has today developed into a continent of 55 independent countries, with a population of 1 billion. The proposed federation would have the largest total territory of any state, exceeding the Russian Federation. It would also be the third most populous state after China and India, and with a population speaking an estimated 2,000 languages.[11]
At the June 2007 meeting of the African Union, discussions centred upon Gaddafi's idea of a federation of African states.
In February 2009, upon being elected chairman of the 53-nation African Union in Ethiopia, Gaddafi told the assembled African leaders: "I shall continue to insist that our sovereign countries work to achieve the United States of Africa." The BBC reported that Gaddafi had proposed "a single African military force, a single currency and a single passport for Africans to move freely around the continent". Other African leaders stated they would study the proposal's implications, and rediscuss it in May 2009.[5]
While development remains in the early stages of planning, ambitious targets have been set. The focus so far has been on building subdivisions of Africa - the proposed East African Federation can be seen as an example of this. The President of Senegal, Abdoulaye Wade, has indicated that the United States of Africa may exist from as early as 2017. The African Union, by contrast, has set itself the task of building a "united and integrated" Africa by 2025.[12] Gaddafi had also indicated that the proposed federation may extend as far west as the Caribbean: Haiti, Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, and other islands featuring a large African diaspora, may be invited to join.[13]
In 1986, 2000, and the months prior to the 2011 Libyan Civil War, Gaddafi announced plans for a unified African gold dinar currency, to challenge the dominance of the US dollar and Euro currencies. The African dinar would have been measured directly in terms of gold, which would mean a country’s wealth would depend on how much gold it had rather than how many dollars it traded, allowing a greater sharing of the wealth and self-determination in Africa. This has led some Africans to believe that, because it may have disrupted the dollar-dominated world economy, this may have been a reason for NATO's 2011 military intervention in Libya against Gaddafi.[14][15]
Of the African nations other than Libya, support for the "United States of Africa" has come from Eritrea, Ghana, Senegal, Zimbabwe, and tentatively from Cape Verde. Others, such as South Africa, Kenya, and Nigeria, have shown less interest in the idea.[1] Support appears for the most part to be inversely proportional to a nation's power and influence.[16] Smaller nations, especially ones with social instability or other issues, have much to gain from a strong federal government. It would, with the pooled resources of the entire continent, be able to deal with the issues affecting that nation. Stronger nations are generally not supportive of a central government that may be less effective than their own. Also, most of the resources would be supplied by the economically powerful nations, and used to fix the issues of the weaker nations. Because of that, the stronger nations have less motivation to support the United States of Africa.
Another issue is that the Arab peoples and nations of North Africa might prefer to join their fellow Arabs in a strengthened and federalized Arab Union rather than be united with the Black Africans of Sub-Saharan Africa.
Doubts have been raised about whether the goal of a unified Africa can ever be achieved while ongoing problems of conflict and poverty persist throughout the continent.[17] Gaddafi also received criticism for his involvement in the movement, and lack of support for the idea from among other African leaders.[18] A week before Gaddafi's death during the 2011 Libyan civil war, South African President Jacob Zuma expressed relief at the regime's downfall, complaining that Gaddafi had been "intimidating" many African heads of state in an effort to gain influence throughout the continent and suggesting that the African Union will function better without Gaddafi and his repeated proposals for a unitary African government.[19]