Workshop: The African Union at 20: Pan-African Pasts and Futures in Global Politics

The African Union will turn twenty in July 2022, providing an important opportunity reflect on issues of African governance, political thought, and the place of the continent in the wider global order. The founding of the AU was viewed by many as the culmination of the Pan-Africanist movement, as the organisation set out an ambitious agenda for a future of peace, democracy and prosperity across Africa, against the background of global liberal hegemony. Twenty years later, we face a very different political moment, as the African continent faces a host of existing and new challenges, whilst the global order is in transition, as democracy, market-based economics and human rights are increasingly under threat.

In April 2022, the Changing Orders project held a workshop and roundtable at CIPS to explore the possibilities and challenges presented by the changing role of the African Union and Pan-African political ideas in the contemporary world order. It brought together world class scholars on international relations and African politics, based in North America, Europe and on the African continent. The workshop aimed to examine three interrelated themes, first, how has the African Union transformed continental governance over the past 20 years? Second, how have the actions of the African Union and new developments in African political thought changed the way we think about the continent’s place in the global order? Thirdly, what are the new avenues and productive possibilities can we find in these debates to address the current crisis in global order? In exploring these questions, the workshop contributed to scholarly debates about the changing world order and to policy discussions about the nature of continental governance in African politics.

The workshop closed with a public roundtable titled “The AU at 20: Challenges and Opportunities” which featured Rita Abrahamsen, Oumar Ba, Thomas Tieku and Antonia Witt.