An 'efficient and effective' African Union?
|14:05 UK time, Thursday, 19 October 2006
Hi there. I'm a little more tired than normal this morning. Not because I had a particularly busy night with our new arrival at home, but because we were all out giving Anu a send off ahead of her going to Delhi for three months to be the correspondent there for BBC Radio News. She's been presenting the show since it launched so it's going to be strange not having her around. But our loss is the Delhi bureau's gain, and I've a feeling we'll be hearing plenty from her both on air and here on the blog.
We've just finished our morning meeting and the African Union is going to be coming under your scrutiny tonight. Go to its website and it flashes the words 'Africa Must Unite' in large letters but judging but what you're telling us, you're far from united over how well this organisation is serving the continent. The website goes on 'an efficient and effective African Union for a new Africa'. But do you think it is 'efficient' and perhaps even more importantly 'effective'?
The reason I ask is that frustration about the situation in Darfur in Sudan abounds. And a lot of that frustration is being directed at the AU. But is the lack of a decisive and effective (that word again) to the crisis really the fault of the AU? And if say 'yes' to that question, is this a symptom of broader problems at the organisation, or just that Darfur is a particularly complex problem which any organisation would struggle to resolve?
If you live in Africa, let us know what the African Union does for you and your country? Do you support its existence? I'm just reading a debate which our colleagues at Africa Have Your Say hosted back in June, and there's plenty of disenchantment surfacing there. This is an organisation that was created to help Africans solve their own problems, so is it doing that?
And if you don't live in Africa, do you care whether the AU serves Africa well or not?
While not specifically about the African Union, you might be interested in watching the interview an ex-Janjaweed fighter gave to the BBC TV programme Newsnight. Its a rare insight into the men that the AU is trying to stop.
Lots of questions and at 17 GMT we'll hear some answers. You can of course post here in the mean time.
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