At present, there are two Africa-wide initiatives that have invigorated what for a lack of a better alternative, I will call long dormant Pan African debates.' On the one hand, there is the effort to create an African Union by the Constitutive Act of Union that has been agreed upon by the heads of states and governments and is to be fully formalized in Pretoria in July 2002. This process has been preceded by the preparation of Protocol establishing the Pan-African Parliament, a legislative body that is to be the law-making wing of the Union in years to come.

On the other hand, The New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD), Africa's strategy for achieving sustainable development in the 21st Century, was adopted by African leaders at the July 2001 Lusaka Summit. The New African Initiative (NAI) was a merger of the Millennium Partnership for the African Recovery Program (MAP) and the Omega Plan. The Omega Plan was first presented by Senegal during the January 2001 France- Africa Summit and launched by Senegal in June 2001 at the International Conference of Economists on the Omega Plan. MAP was spearheaded by South Africa with support from Nigeria and Algeria, with the involvement of Senegal and Egypt, and received endorsement from the Extraordinary OAU Summit in March 2001 in Sitre, Libya, which declared the establishment of the African Union.

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