African securityIs the time finally right for a pan-African security force?
Representatives of fifty-three African states, meeting at an African summit in Paris last week, emphasized the need for a pan-African military force. Observers note that this is not a new idea – it was first raised Ghana’s first president Kwame Nkrumah in 1963 — but that on those few occasions when efforts were made to translate the idea into reality, it has never worked. Notwithstanding the many failures of the past, and the many warning signs of the present, many African leaders and observers are optimistic that this time, the 50-year old dream of a pan-African military force may well be realized.
Representatives of fifty-three African states, meeting at an African summit in Paris last week, emphasized the need for a pan-African military force. Observers note that this is not a new idea, but that on those few occasions when efforts were made to translate the idea into reality, it has never worked.
Are conditions on the continent now more hospitable to this five-decade old concept?
France24 notes that the plan for a pan-African security force was first discussed in the late 1950s and early 1960s, at the height of the struggle against colonialism which was sweeping the continent. During the first half of the 1960s, as more and more African states gained their independence, there was a renewed attempt to revive the idea. The reasoning was that if the newly independent states tried to build their own national armies, they would be caught up in the cold war because neither the West not the Soviet bloc would offer much military support to a country unless that country was willing to take sides in the tense East-West struggle. A pan-African security force, if it came into being, would obviate the need by African states to choose sides and become pawns in the global chess game.
When the cold war ended, supporters of the pan-African force idea offered the opposite line of reasoning: now that the cold war was over, the one great power that remained, and the numerous mid-sized powers, were no longer engaged in the kind of fierce, do-or-die competition, and as a result would have less of an incentives to rush troops to Africa to defend states close to them. This means that the African states must become more organized and self-reliant if they wanted to keep a measure of peace and stability on the continent.
The reasoning may have changed, but the result was the same: the idea has never gone much beyond discussions among heads of states.
It is thus nearly fifty years since Ghana’s first president Kwame Nkrumah first floated the idea, and the African Standby Force, or ASF, is still being promoted as best hope for African order and stability.
Which brings us back to last week’s Paris African summit. The leaders of the fifty-three African countries stressed – as Nkrumah did in 1963 – the urgent need to build a pan-African military force capable of intervening in regional conflicts.
