If Uganda were a ‘good African’, President Museveni would be continent’s big chief

Last week we learnt that Uganda owes several international bodies Shs63b in unpaid mandatory subscriptions. This, Daily Monitor reported, was putting the country’s voting powers and eligibility to attend conferences, where critical decisions are made, at risk. Those amounts owed were at Financial Year 2014/15, the latest figures that Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) is examining. There are no numbers for whether the debt has done up or reduced.

In August, former Foreign Affairs Permanent Secretary James Mugume, a member of the Uganda Council on Foreign Relations, while commenting on the 0.2 per cent levy on selected imports from outside Africa being implemented to fund the African Union, was reported to have said “since Uganda has not performed satisfactorily in contributions to the AU, it should now focus on implementing the 0.2 per cent import levy.”
Just as well, because at its meeting in Addis Ababa at the weekend, the AU agreed a sanctions regime against member states that fail to make their annual contributions. The sanctions could include suspension of a member state from the AU assembly and other gatherings.

Though contributions by members to the AU budget have improved a little, external funding still accounts for nearly 60 per cent of its budget.
More scandalous, external funding of the AU’s peace budget, its most critical function, is just shy of being 100 per cent. The recent AU reforms, driven by Rwanda President Paul Kagame, aim over time to fund 100 per cent of its operational budget, 75 per cent of its programme budget and 25 per cent of its peace funding. It is a big ask.

Last year, a report from the Centre for Citizens’ Participation in the African Union showed that as of late 2013, only 19 member countries had cleared their dues, while four - Gabon, Zambia, Nigeria, and Ethiopia - had also paid a proportion of dues in advance for 2014. So basically, in a 55-member organisation, only a third were paid up.

The AU is divided in a kind of rich, middle, and poor man’s club. According to an old formula, the bigger and richer countries - Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Nigeria, and South Africa - paid about 66 per cent of the AU budget. Despite this, they don’t enjoy extra voting powers.
When Libya was awash with oil money, and the eccentric Brotherly Leader and Guide of the Revolution Muammar Gaddafi was in charge, he bought the allegiance of AU member states through paying their annual subscriptions, and then personal bribes to officials and even presidents.

There were reports that sometimes there were more African leaders and government officials waiting to see Gaddafi outside his tent, than there were at the AU meeting. People emerged stuffing fat envelopes full of dollars in their jacket pockets, with mildly embarrassed faces.
Gaddafi wanted a United States of Africa, a good thing on the face of it, but with one caveat – with him as king. As a first step, in 2008, he rounded up and paid nearly 200 traditional African leaders who crowned him “King of Kings”. Other leaders resented him. In October 2011, he died a horrible death at the hands of enraged dissidents who had risen up against his 42-year rule in the wave of the Arab Spring, and that was that.

Libya descended into chaos, and the money dried up. Leadership and economic crises have hobbled both South Africa and Nigeria. Morocco has since rejoined the AU, after staying away for 33 years in protest, after the OAU, its precursor, recognised the independence of Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara in 1984.

Why should any of this matter for Uganda? President Museveni partly stakes his claim to power at home, and a place as an elder statesman in Africa and indeed the world, because of his (and the ruling NRM’s) pan-African credentials. But because Uganda is not a diligent payer of its AU dues, those claims are what West Africans would call “all mouth”.
But also, with the death, fall or departure of Africa’s radicals (Meles Zenawi in Ethiopia, Gaddafi, Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, José Eduardo dos Santos in Angola) their madness notwithstanding, there has been a shift to the centre right in pan-African politics that is making people like Museveni irrelevant.

The rising two strong political leadership models in Africa today are a centrist, type of “new age” conservatism (Nana Kofi Addo in Ghana, Macky Sall in Senegal, João Lourenço in Angola, Cyril Ramaphosa in South Africa to name a few), and a kind of pan-African lite globalism (Paul Kagame, Abiy Ahmed in Ethiopia). Museveni represents a type that is passing.
But getting his teeth into something like the AU – or even the EAC – and owning and making it work, would give him a lot of capital and new relevance in an area where there are no real contenders right now.

Mr Onyango-Obbo is the publisher of Africa data visualiser Africapedia.com and explainer site. Roguechiefs.com. Twitter@cobbo3