Hacker News Reader

Comment by Havoc | Hacker News Reader

>Since the western media almost never reports anything on Africa, does anybody know how the AU is progressing?

Slow progress, but progressing none the less. Seems to be poorly funded so their latest idea is to put an AU tax on all imports.

The whole thing seems to lack direction beyond a vague desire to prove that Africa can be united like the "big boys" i.e. EU.

The passport thing will take off I think. It'll take a while & cause serious security issues but I think they'll do it.

>Are they pushing for a EU like model?

They're copying some things, but don't seem to be doing the whole Brussels centralised power thing.

View on HN

It's slightly better than the OAU, whose heads have historically been a who's who of corrupt and brutal dictators: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chairperson_of_the_African_Uni...

But, on the whole, the AU is still an embarrassing dictator's club whose primary purpose is to run flak for violent undemocratic regimes and solicit foreign aid.

The vast majority of african heads of state are either outright dictators or president's of ethnically majoritarian effectively one-party states with election irregularities and numerous human rights violations.

Besides Botswana, South Africa, Ghana and one or two others, the rest of the continent exists in a state of totally irregular politics with governments that show little interest in civil or human rights: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index

I would much prefer to see a Africa-wide organization made up out of democratic African nations and the democratic opposition within the rest of the countries, something like the early days of the ANC, although with less of a communist influence.

Europe is very homogenous and the EU is in a permanent state of crisis. If the AU tries anything like that they are dead the very same day.

>If the AU tries anything like that they are dead the very same day.

Don't think so. Things are much more resilient that side in the sense that working around things that don't work is just another normal day.

Europe homogeneous? The USA is way more homogeneous. European countries have between them dozens of official languages and cultures.

That's the point. If the EU is more homogeneous and it has some serious issues, then a similar union in somewhere with even greater diversity may be prone to the same issues or worse (note: I'm just paraphrasing the poster for clarification - I'm not knowledgable enough on the AU to comment on whether this is true)

It makes me wonder... would you be better off being heterogeneous group of states? That way you can accept your differences right away, and move on towards a common goal (economic union).

When homogeneous its almost as if you have to look for some artificial differences (nit picking) to avoid admitting your similarities... "oh, no... we are not like them... we are different", and then subscribe to a union for the greater good (like an EU). And probably after getting a lot of unicorn concessions.

I see the India model as being what Africa might end up getting. Many Indian states have their own distinct language, and often culture (food, etc). However India has a common currency. The easy part for India was that the states were defacto 'inherited into the union' at independence. For Africa it is going to be a 'subscribe into the economic union' with a lot of nationalistic arguments that are going to come into play.

I am hoping a group of mostly stable countries band together and make it happen first. My founders list would be Namibia, Botswana, Angola, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, and Kenya. A nice list stretching from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean. These are moderate names, not often in the news and stable for the most part. If South Africa would join that would be a big win... but I am hoping one of the smaller countries takes leadership initially.

> I am hoping a group of mostly stable countries band together and make it happen first. My founders list would be Namibia, Botswana, Angola, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, and Kenya. A nice list stretching from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean. These are moderate names, not often in the news and stable for the most part. If South Africa would join that would be a big win... but I am hoping one of the smaller countries takes leadership initially.

I'm guessing you're pulling this list mostly on the basis on geographical proximity and "these haven't been in the news", as opposed to examples of African success. Angola definitely shouldn't be on that list (it's basically a kleptocratic petrostate à la Algeria), and Kenya is eyebrow-worthy.

In general, the best-run states of Africa are geographically dispersed. The island nations of Cape Verde, Seychelles, and Mauritius; Botswana and Namibia; Tunisia and Morocco; maybe Gabon and Ghana will generally top all of the various lists of economically successful, well-run, well-developed, democratically free. Rwanda would be on the list were it not for being fairly autocratic--most notably, it's a very rare example of an autocratic country that's fairly free of corruption. South Africa is notable for pretty much backsliding on all of these metrics, despite starting from a relatively high position.

The AU is split up into multiple blocs, each supposedly working towards eventual unity. The East African bloc (Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, and Uganda) has generally been the furthest along, and the South African bloc (in particular, Namibia, Botswana, South Africa, Swaziland, and Lesotho) the second. It should be noted, though, that actual adherence to the currently-enacted treaties can be rather thin on the ground.

Reading the GP made me immediately think of India as a counterexample, nice to see someone else did too. :)

India was never a "country" before the Brits, it was just a geographic region with some commonalities. Various empires have covered large swathes of India, but there wasn't any common identity. By being lumped into a single country by the British, India got this identity.

India has many problems but "regionalism" isn't one of them. It exists and causes issues every now and then, but not too much.

However, India has had a catalyst here as you mention. The first was having little choice in forming this union[1], and the second was the "common enemy" of the British bonding otherwise-distinct groups of people together.

Ironically, the country most Indians hate the most is Pakistan, despite it having been part of the "common identity" and having the same catalysts. Part of this is deliberate divide-and-conquer (divide-and-cripple, really, this was done after the country was conquered; during the independence process) by the British, part of it is simple religious hatred. Though India has a much nicer relationship with, say, Afghanistan (but some of the reasons for that involve Pakistan ... so it's nuanced).

So if India had never been a single nation and had to form an AU- or EU-like union, its quite possible that the relations between various regions would have been much more strained -- India-Pakistan relations are an example of how it could have gone. This is all speculation and Africa is very different anyway, so I'm not quite sure if this will be a problem there. I'm optimistic.

[1]: Though many leaders from the revolutionary movement have a hand in avoiding the fragmentation of some parts of India, which was on the table. But the common "Indian" identity existed before independence, due to being part of the same colony.

The funny thing is that penal code, judicial and government structure still haven't diverged that much between the two countries.

how about ASEAN then?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com