By DPA
Accra/Nairobi : African leaders were unable to agree on the way forward for a plan that would see a common foreign and defence policy from Cairo to the Cape, after a three-day summit focusing on the idea.
The ninth African Union (AU) summit in Accra, Ghana, that ended late Tuesday, had been extended by several hours to allow the 53 member states to forge a resolution on the continental government, but all they agreed upon was to create a commission that would study the idea and set up a road map.
A rift had emerged half way through the summit between backers of the continental government, including Libyan leader Moamer Gadaffi who championed the idea, and heads of state from Africa's eastern and southern parts, who said they would prefer to remain in regional blocs.
"In Uganda, we are not in favour of forming a continental government now," Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni told Kenya's independent Daily Nation.
Museveni, like Lesotho's Prime Minster Bethuel Pakalitha Mosisili, said that Uganda was more comfortable with linking itself to similar, neighbouring countries before joining a continental federation.
Proponents say a strongly united Africa is the best way for the continent, where more than half the population lives on less than one dollar a day, to uproot itself from poverty.
Liberalizing trade within Africa and doing away with entry visas would be a start, but Africa could act as a unified trading bloc when coming up against the US and the EU.
Meanwhile, a shared defence policy would see up to 2 million troops at the continental government's disposal, but critics charge the proposal is laughable with the AU – what would be the precursor to the pan-African federation – can hardly muster up enough soldiers for its missions.
The United States of Africa had been billed as the "grand debate" for the AU's summit, angering rights groups who said the issue would bump crises in Zimbabwe, Sudan and Somalia off the agenda.