By Editorial Board
The African Union’s calendar is a monument to ambition and a graveyard of implementation. This year alone, the continent’s leaders will gather for no fewer than four major summits — on climate, trade, health security, and digital transformation — each producing communiqués that read beautifully and achieve very little.
The problem is not aspiration. The African Continental Free Trade Area is a genuinely transformative idea. Agenda 2063 sets out a compelling vision. The trouble is that between vision and execution lies a vast accountability desert where commitments go to die.
Consider the numbers: of the 36 flagship projects identified in the AU’s first ten-year implementation plan, only four are on track. Member states routinely fail to pay their assessed contributions. The Peer Review Mechanism, designed to hold governments accountable, has been voluntarily adopted by fewer than half the continent’s nations.
What Africa needs is not another declaration but a mechanism with teeth — binding commitments, transparent reporting, and consequences for non-compliance. Until then, the summits will continue to produce headlines without outcomes.
