The 36th African Union Heads of State Summit is being held in Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa on February 18-19. At least 35 presidents and four prime ministers will attend, according to the Ethiopian government. Devoted in particular to the deadly violence in the Sahel and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, violence that “deeply” concerns the UN, not to mention the continental free trade area project and the issue of food crises on a continent facing a historic drought, this summit promises to be the summit of all challenges.
“Africa needs action for peace,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged the AU assembly, referring in particular to the situation in the Sahel and in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Ahead of the summit, discussions took place on Friday on the situation in eastern DRC plagued by armed groups, particularly in the border area with Rwanda, in the presence of the Congolese Head of State Félix Tshisekedi and his counterpart Rwandan Paul Kagame. At the meeting, heads of state from the East African Community (EAC), made up of seven countries, called for a “withdrawal of all armed groups” by March 30. Regarding Ethiopia, its Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed, host of the summit, praised before the assembly the peace agreement signed, under the aegis of the AU, between his government and the rebels of the region of Tigré, which allowed, according to Mr. Abiy, to “silence the guns”.
Another file: Mali, Burkina Faso and Guinea, three countries ruled by soldiers who emerged from coups d’état, following which they were suspended from the AU, sent delegations to Addis Ababa to plead for the lifting of these suspensions. On Friday, Moussa Faki Mahamat, chairman of the AU Commission, told AFP that the institution’s “peace and security” council would meet, on an unspecified date, to decide on a possible lifting of the ban. the suspension of these three countries. On Saturday, Moussa Faki Mahamat asserted that “these sanctions do not seem to produce the expected results”.
On the economic side, the central subject is the African Continental Free Trade Area (Zlec) which should bring together 1.4 billion people and become the largest market in the world in terms of population. The summit will focus, in particular, on the “acceleration” of Zlec, intended to promote trade within the continent and attract investors. Clarification: for the time being, intra-African trade represents only 15% of the continent’s total trade. According to the World Bank, by 2035, the agreement would create 18 million additional jobs and “could help lift up to 50 million people out of extreme poverty”. Its combined GDP is $3.4 trillion, according to the UN. But differences remain on the continent. All AU countries, with the exception of Eritrea, have joined, but discussions are stumbling over the timetable for tariff reductions, particularly for the least developed countries. Mr. Guterres said Zlec “represents a truly transformative pathway towards creating jobs and new sources of prosperity for Africans”.
In addition, Azali Assoumani, President of the Comoros, a small archipelago in the Indian Ocean of approximately 850,000 inhabitants, took over the rotating presidency of the AU, following Macky Sall, the Senegalese head of state who, before handing over, presented a report on the food crises, on a continent hard hit by the consequences – in particular the soaring prices – of the war in Ukraine. “Our organization has just proven to the world its conviction that all countries have the same rights”, welcomed the Comorian president who pleaded for a “total cancellation” of the African debt.
That said, the Comorian head of state “will need the support of other African leaders to assume his mandate, given the country’s limited diplomatic weight”, notes the NGO International Crisis Group (ICG). Meanwhile, his chairmanship of the AU is not being greeted with joy by everyone. The arrival of Azali Assoumani is “a failure,” said AFP Mahamoudou Ahamada, lawyer and presidential candidate in 2019. “Only African dictators who care about their respective populations can be delighted with this appointment. But, according to the Head of State’s diplomatic adviser, Hamada Madi, this appointment is on the contrary the result of Azali Assoumani’s “perseverance” and seeing “the Union of the Comoros on the roof of Africa is everything simply magnificent “.
But who really is Azali Assoumani, the first Comorian to take over the rotating presidency of the pan-African organization?
The least we can say is that it is controversial. Presented as someone who loves power for not having hesitated to throw his opponents in prison and to change the law to stay in the presidential palace of Beit-Salam, this former chief of staff of the army, born on January 1, 1959, trained at the Royal Moroccan Military Academy in Meknes (1978-1981) and at the Paris War School (1985-1986).
Azali Assoumani burst onto the Comorian political scene in 1999 in one of the many coups that have rocked the small Indian Ocean archipelago since its independence from France in 1975. Presenting himself as a “profound democrat “, he explained at the time that he seized power only to avoid a civil war, in the midst of a separatist crisis with one of the islands of this poor country of around 900,000 inhabitants. The sequel will debunk this claim, as he seemed to have really taken a liking to power. Representing himself in 2002, he only reluctantly returned the keys to the country to the civilians in 2006, under a Constitution which established a rotating presidency between the three islands of the Union (Grande Comore where he was born, Anjouan and Moheli). He will then retire to his land and become a farmer. But far from power, the man is bored and considers himself “unemployed”…
In 2016, the call is too strong and Azali Assoumani stands for the supreme office. Defying the odds, he won a chaotic and contested election. Leaving power “was a mistake” that he will not repeat, he once told a diplomat stationed in the capital Moroni. Back in the presidential palace, he eliminated all the obstacles in a few months: dissolution of the Constitutional Court, amendment of the Constitution to extend the duration of the rotating presidency from one to two terms, and early election in 2019. Result: the next presidential election will take place next year and if re-elected, Azali Assoumani will reign until 2029. On his way to power, he also had his main opponents arrested, including former President Ahmed Abdallah Sambi for corruption. In preventive detention for more than four years, Mr. Sambi was finally sentenced in November to life in prison for high treason, after a trial denounced as unfair.
His detractors like to recall an inglorious episode in his military career. In 1995, cut off from national radio besieged by the mercenaries of Frenchman Bob Denard, he abandoned his men in the middle of the fight: “Hold on, I’m going to get reinforcements”, he would have promised before running to take refuge at the embassy. from France to Moroni. A good tribune, the married colonel and father of four children declared himself an imam after 2016. According to those close to him in power, “he is convinced that what is happening to him is of divine order”.
