A Democratic Audit of the African Union

The inception of the African Union in 2002, emanated from the evolution of the 19th century Pan- African movement which aimed for a greater solidarity among the people of Africa. By the turn of the 20th century, the Pan-African movement became a formal organization called, Organization of African Unity (OAU). It was subsequently renamed the African Union to symbolize a new era of integration, modeled after the European Union, with similar institutional structure, norms and values. In this light, the norms, values and principles of the African Union are supposed to be used as a yardstick to achieve a more democratic union. The question guiding this research is: how effective has the African Union (as a body) been in implementing the norms and democratic principles documented in the Constitutive Act, the founding document of the African Union? This study aims to carry out a democratic audit of the African Union and to provide an appraisal of the Union‟s Norms/Principles as opposed to the Union‟s implementation in these areas. The research will adopt the measures developed for evaluating the democratic performance of the European Union and apply them to the African Union to provide a democratic audit of the organization. The research tests measure the awareness level of African Union member states to highlight lack of awareness as a major cause of non-attainment of the goals of the organization. Keywords: African Union, democratic audit, democratic deficit.