Paper short abstract:

This paper analyses the Union Government debate, a debate over the form and pace of regional integration in Africa, and explores the relationship between African states’ challenge to Western hegemony, the debate over regional integration in Africa, and the self-representations of the continent.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the relationship between African states' challenge to Western hegemony, the debate over regional integration in Africa, and the self-representations of the continent. The resurgence of regionalism in the late 1980s and the continued importance and deepening of regional integration has been a central feature of an increasingly multipolar global environment. This paper analyses the Union Government debate (2005-2010), a debate over the form and pace of regional integration in Africa. This debate, a twenty-first century iteration of the Pan-Africanist ideals that have been a persistent theme in post-independence African inter-state relations, has been largely ignored by scholars outside the continent. This has perhaps resulted from a certain amount of understandable scepticism; Pan-Africanist ideals of a radical restructuring of the continent have seldom been realised. However, the fact that states have persisted in reviving the debate on regional integration suggests that the debate is by no means insignificant or uninteresting. The academic inattention to this debate has therefore resulted in a missed opportunity to study the conundrums and puzzles posed by the debate. In this paper, the analysis of the Union Government debate allows us to examine the links between an African ideal of global multipolarity through regional integration, and an idea of Africa generated in the discourse on regional integration. This paper argues that the debate over African regional integration has been revived partially in order to challenge the influence of the 'West' in Africa, and this has led to the reproduction of essentialist understandings of Africa.