Title: Organisation of African Unity (OAU) | South African History Online
Headings: Organisation of African Unity (OAU)
Organisation of African Unity (OAU)
Context: The Emergence of a Pan-African Rhetoric
Formation
Structure
Achievements
Challenges
Dissolution
Collections in the Archives
Timelines
Archive
Visit our YouTube Channel

Content: Perhaps Nkrumah naively pursued a single-minded Pan-African ambition with the assumption that other leaders would be of a like-minded predisposition. Nkrumah nevertheless underestimated the support for a continental union which would require the surrendering of sovereignty to gain a common monetary, foreign and defence policy, and by the time the OAU was established it presented itself as a diluted version of its former envisioned grandeur. The turbulence of the early 1960s pressed the notion of African countries presenting a united front in the hopes of being taken seriously on the world stage, although the newfound OAU disappointed many of its founding members. Formation
Thus, between 22 and 25 May 1963, delegates from 32 African countries convened in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa to establish the Organisation for African Unity (OAU), intended to form the continental base for pan-Africanism but resulting in a watered-down compromise between competing ideological blocs. At the outset, then, complete unification seemed unattainable. The divisions rendered the construction of a union government based on a consensus of structural, military and political institutions untenable. The OAU was thus founded with the intention that the organisation would proceed, incrementally, with unification until the eventual goal of a Union of African States was realised. Founding fathers of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), 1963. Source: thisisafrica
While the immediate full integration of African countries was untenable, the OAU did make significant steps towards identifying socio-economic development issues which racked the continent after independence.