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Current African Issues No. 25
The New African Initiativeand the African Union
A Preliminary Assessment and Documentation
Henning Melber 
Nordiska Afrikainstitutet 2001ISSN 0280-2171
 
During the year 2000 an initiative among the African states to transform the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) into the AfricanUnion (AU) gained momentum. It resulted in the ratification of the Constitutive Act and its adoption at the 36th Ordinary Session of the Assembly of Heads of State and Government in July 2001 in Lusaka. Parallel to this process of reorganisation towards closer in-ter-state collaboration on the African continent in the spirit of Pan Africanism emerged the systematic effort to redefine developmentalpriorities and to claim a new common position of African states in the globalised world. The “African Renaissance” initiative of SouthAfrica’s President Thabo Mbeki resulted in a “Millenium Africa Recovery Programme”, which was finally revised and presented as the“New Africa Initiative” (NAI). Adopted at the same OAU Summit in Lusaka in July 2001, the NAI serves as a blueprint for Africa’sdevelopment strategy at the beginning of the 21st century. It was presented to the G8 summit in Genoa, where the leaders of theworld’s powerful countries decided on a follow up by appointing individual special advisers to explore support to the NAI and futurecollaboration on the basis of this document.This paper offers a preliminary assessment of the New Africa Initiative within the context of the transformation of the OAU into theAU. It identifies and summarises essential new aspects advocated, critically examines the degree of realism and points at the possiblelimitations. The analysis also considers first reactions to the initiatives and reflects on the perspectives. The article is completed by areproduction of the full texts of both, the New Africa Initiative and the Constitutive Act of the African Union as the presently mostrelevant documents illustrating the commitment of Africa’s policy makers to address the political and economic challenges.
Henning Melber 
is Research Director at the Nordic Africa Institute. He has studied Political Science (PhD 1980) and Sociology (
venia legendi 
in Development Studies 1993). From 1992 to 2000 he has been Director of the Namibian Economic Policy Research Unit(NEPRU) in Windhoek.
NORDISKA AFRIKAINSTITUTET
The Nordic Africa InstituteP O Box 1703, SE-751 47 UppsalaTel. (46)-18-56 22 00, telefax (46)-18-56 22 90E-mail: nai@nai.uu.se. Internet: www.nai.uu.seISSN 0280-2171ISBN 91-7106-486-9
 
Current African Issues No. 25ISSN 0280-2171
The New African Initiative andthe African Union
A Preliminary Assessment and Documentation
Henning Melber 
Nordiska Afrikainstitutet 2001
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