As I suggest above, this appeal to/for an African agenda is grand romanticism, not real politik. We know from theory and from empirical studies that top-down trickle-down approaches are unlikely to solve Africa's fundamental problems of poverty, illiteracy and disease. A look at AU for instance, suggests we are too focused on being like the UN, instead of recognising our resource constraints and cutting our suit according to our cloth.

But beyond that continental body, what is the value addition of the 12-odd bodies duplicating activities across the continent? Eight of the 15 ECOWAS countries belong to UWEMOA, the only divide being that the latter are Francophone. Among SADC's 15 members, 4 belong to SACU, and 8 belong to COMESA. Some of these countries belonging to multiple organisations, paying millions in membership fees, cannot even feed their people at home!

Good governance requires prudent management of government. The richer countries of Europe have a single primary membership body, EU...and NATO if you like. So why do we allow France to sponsor UWEMOA as a means of dividing ECOWAS?

African countries are burning money they do not have in such organisations; but they also burn money internally through corruption. The bottom line is the failure of good governance on the continent.