President William Ruto on Tuesday chaired a high-stakes African Union Institutional Reform Ad Hoc Committee meeting in Luanda, renewing his call for a comprehensive overhaul of the continental body. This comes amid growing concern that the AU’s structures are no longer fit for purpose in an increasingly turbulent global order.
The closed-door session, attended by heads of state tasked with steering reforms, examined a report outlining eight priority areas seen as central to rescuing the AU from what officials describe as creeping stagnation. These include revitalising the AU’s peace and security architecture, securing sustainable financing, operationalising the long-delayed African Court of Justice, and streamlining an agenda critics say has become unwieldy and repetitive.
OVERLAPPING MANDATES
Other proposals seek to revamp the Pan-African Parliament, simplify the categorisation of AU decisions, clarify the division of labour between the AU, regional blocs and national governments, and restructure remaining organs and institutions that have long operated with overlapping mandates.
Ruto, who currently leads the AU reform docket, has positioned himself as one of the continent’s most vocal advocates for institutional renewal. At last year’s United Nations General Assembly, he delivered a pointed speech demanding far-reaching reforms of the UN Security Council and global financial system, arguing that outdated structures had left African countries marginalised at the very moment global crises, from debt distress to climate shocks, require broader representation and more equitable decision-making.
That same logic, aides say, underpins his push for AU reforms: that unless the continental body modernises its internal machinery, strengthens its financing and sharpens its political coherence, Africa’s external demands for global reform will ring hollow.
DIMINISHING INFLUENCE
“Without meaningful change, the AU risks diminishing its influence and missing opportunities that could shape Africa’s future,” Ruto told leaders, warning that delay would only widen the gap between the Union’s ambitions and its capabilities.
To ensure member states have a decisive say in the overhaul, leaders agreed that a full summit of heads of state will be convened later in the year to debate and refine the proposals.
Ruto insisted the reforms are achievable if governments demonstrate collective political will, urging his peers to “join forces to turn this dream into reality” and build a more responsive, credible and effective African Union.
