Paper short abstract:

The paper examines the initiatives of the Pan African global governance institution – the African Union (AU)’s efforts to transform the national politics of Africa as well as globalize the practice of African politics.

Paper long abstract:

The paper examines the initiatives of the Pan African global governance institution - the African Union (AU)-explaining 'the African Union phenomenon'. Will examine Africa's own self-determined, international norms and values such as Pan Africanism, African Solutions for African Problems, Hybrid Democracy, Pax Africana, and the African Economic Community, to demonstrate that Africa - the world's least developed region- is constitutive of crucial values, institutions, agents, actors, and forces that are, through the continent's African Union, contributing to the advancement of contemporary global development. Using new Pan Africanist and constructivist international relations' theoretical frameworks in globalization studies, the paper examines the AU as a regional and intergovernmental organization as well as an emerging socio-economically integrated 'supra-state' actor that revives Pan Africanist ideology to wrestle for self-determined control of the Continent in a contemporary global governance arena that is hierarchical and marginalizes Africa to a bottom-tier. The paper presents an interesting alternative illustration of how, in the areas of cultural identity, democracy, security, and economic development, Africans - through the AU- infuse new politics, economics, and cultures into globalization representing the collective will and imprint of African agency, decisions, ideas, identities, practices and contexts. The paper concludes that Africa's AU is influencing regional and global impact which it achieves by resuscitating and cultivating a Pan African vision on behalf of Africans.