What Should Count as Progress Toward African Unity?

Africans are asked to celebrate a lot of summits. Communiqués are issued, photographs are taken, and a year later it is hard to say what changed. If the unity of Africa is to be more than an anniversary, we need ways to tell progress from ceremony. Here are four tests we will be applying: suggested tests, not a report card.

Did money actually move across a border in local currency, within seconds, without a third currency in the middle? PAPSS, which enables exactly that kind of transfer (Afreximbank), exists; the question is whether businesses use it.

Are tariff schedules gazetted, applied and enforced, and are goods crossing borders under AfCFTA rules of origin? Ratifications are headlines; shipments are progress.

Did people get electricity, transport or connectivity they did not have before? Commitments are inputs. Connections are outcomes.

When a regional institution sets a deadline and misses it, does it publish an explanation and a new date? Institutions that cannot account for misses cannot be trusted with merger.

None of these tests requires a united Africa to exist first, which is the point. They measure whether the ground is being prepared. And they cut both ways: a federation built on unintegrated payments, unenforced trade rules and unaccountable institutions would be a flag on paper.

So when the next summit photo arrives, ask the four questions. That is what this Dispatch will be doing.