“We expect full integration around 2030, when the [continent’s] economy will be amalgamated. Africans will use one currency, and goods will flow freely within the continent. The common market will also have a unified tax rate for all outsiders.” So said René N’Guettia Kouassi, Director of Economic Affairs for the African Union Commission, in January.
If the disaster of the European Union was not large enough for the world to see, how sad to hear such dismal prospects promoted for such a great continent. One world created in the depressing image of capitalism would seem to be the vision of such blinkered people.
Africa, the world’s greatest centre of undeveloped mineral wealth, is beset with war and neoliberal economics and squabbled over by the armies of previous empires. It needs to stand up around the principles which originally drove African unity: independence, sovereignty, national liberation and socialism. Why imitate the failed European Union? ■