It was a clever move. The AU summit was timed to start on Monday, July 9, the tenth anniversary of the founding of the African Union (AU) in 2002, the successor to the Organisation for African Unity (OAU). The AU now has a membership of 54 nations and so the numerous anniversary speeches largely eclipsed the diplomatic crisis which had dominated the run-up to this summit.

The summit was originally supposed to take place in Malawi, but the government in Lilongwe refused to invite Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, owing to an International Criminal Court warrant out for his arrest on genocide charges. The summit was then moved to Addis Ababa in Ethiopia, which then prompted Malawi's president Joyce Banda to boycott the meeting.

Opponents and supporters of the ICC

There are deep divisions in the AU over the International Criminal Court. Meeting in Uganda in 2010, the AU decided not to support the tribunal, a move which several countries, including South Africa and Botswana, do not consider to be binding. They are among the 33 African states who signed the ICC's founding charter.

There is also heated debate about the AU Commission leadership. Elections to this post have already been postponed once because none of the candidates could secure the required two thirds majority.

Jostling for the top job

The current AU Commission president, Gabon's Jean Ping, who represents the traditionally dominant francophone bloc within the organisation, is running against Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, South Africa's female interior minister.

Outwardly, Pretoria has been stressing the need for gender balance and would like to see Dlamini-Zuma installed as the AU's first woman president. But the real issue is whether economic powerhouse South Africa, which already represents Africa in the UN Security Council and in the G20, can muster a majority on its home continent.

Jide Okeke is an analyst with the Institute for Security Studies in Nairobi. He believes this is not a struggle between english-speaking and francophone countries, but a tussle between regional powers with competing interests. South Africa has SADC, the Southern African Development Community behind it, Gabon has the support of many small West African nations led by english-speaking Nigeria.

There is an unwritten rule in the AU that says top positions should be occupied by the smaller and poorer countries. South Africa has broken that rule with its candidacy, annoying political heavyweights Algeria and Nigeria. South Africa insists, though, that the AU needs strong leadership so as to avoid dilemmas of the sort that troubled it during the Libya crisis. As that crisis unfolded, the AU was very reluctant to adopt a common position.

Mali and Sudan

Regional crises will dominate the AU summit agenda until the question of the bloc's leadership is resolved. Mali now tops the agenda. The West African regional bloc ECOWAS wants to intervene militarily, but the UN Security Council is refusing to give its approval. Andreas Mehler, director of GIGA (the German Institute of Global and Area Studies) says ECOWAS needs to submit "very concrete plans" about personnel, timing and political objectives. "This doesn't seem to have been settled yet," he says, "ECOWAS is just charging ahead and expecting everybody else to catch up."

The conflict in Sudan will be on the agenda when heads of state and government meet at the weekend. Khartoum and Juba have been holding AU-sponsored talks for months at a location not far from the summit venue. They are looking for a political solution to their dispute over oil, which is driving both countries to the brink of bankruptcy and sending demonstrators out on to the streets in Khartoum.

Somalia will also be discussed. The mandate from the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) expires on August 20. That's when the country is due to get a new president and a new government. Analyst Andreas Mehler believes the AU will wish to create the appearance of a successfully negotiated settlement. "But as long as the security problems haven't been solved, little will have been achieved. There will be plenty of symbolism, but little change," he predicts.

Mehler does not believe Malawi's boycott and the presence of Sudanese President al Bashir in Addis Ababa will overshadow the summit. He believes there can be no solution to the Sudanese conflict without Bashir. That is why Malawi was abandoned as a summit venue, because Bashir has to be in attendance, Mehler says. In view of the many urgent crises swirling around, the topic for which the summit was initially called, namely the creation of a pan-African trade zone by 2017, will probably be given only scant attention.

Author: Ludger Schadomsky / mc
Editor: Susan Houlton

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