The African Union and the path to an African Renaissance

The current development initiative by the African Union (AU) has been declared 'the New African Renaissance.' This paper traces the origin and meaning of African Renaissance and argues that the AU has yet to frame its development model within this concept. The challenges obstructing the Union from achieving its goals are lack of financial resources, weak capacity, and lack of political will. As a result, it continues to be externally dependent for development ideas and frameworks. Thus, I argue that for the Union to translate its aspiration for the African Renaissance into a reality, it is critical to break the culture of dependency. This would be possible through a homegrown approach to development that: (1) Creates and implements institutional capacity, fostering synergy between the Union and member states' citizens. (2) Provides a mechanism that encourages a real commitment of African leaders to generate resources to fund the Union's programme internally.