This is the fourth edition of the Yearbook on the African Union (YBAU). This project was started in 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic. The Yearbook provides an in-depth analysis of the African Union (AU), its institutions, actors, and practices. It seeks to be a reference point both for academic work on the Union as well as evidence-based policy-making and decision-making. The Yearbook on the African Union takes seriously the agency and ownership of the AU and its member states. At the same time, it recognises the constraints to which this pan-African project is still subject – politically, financially, and sometimes also in terms of compliance and commitment of member States to the Union’s own norms and legal frameworks.
The contributors to the Yearbook on the African Union document ongoing practices in a wide range of policy fields and analyse the various entanglements between the continental body, on the one hand, and the 55 AU member states, 8 officially recognised Regional Economic Communities (RECs), and international partners, on the other. Overall, the political environment for the AU has become more complicated in the second decade of this millennium, as outlined in very clear terms in the opening chapter on ‘The World as Seen from Addis’ (a guest commentary by Kwesi Aning and Elsie A. Tachie-Menson from the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre in Accra, Ghana). The Yearbook illustrates how the AU is trying to overcome these challenges, negotiate its way, and realise what is ultimately to become a ‘people’s union’.
We are confident that the Yearbook on the African Union will continue to be a unique product that provides guidance and contextualisation to all those interested in one of the largest and most ambitious, but also most challenged, international organisations.
Last but not least, the members of the editorial board are particularly pleased that a solution has now been found with our publisher Brill to make the Yearbook on the African Union freely accessible (open access will be provided one year after publication of the volume). This will certainly enlarge the readership that the Yearbook deserves, especially on the African continent.
Editorial Board
(Linnéa Gelot, Cheryl Hendricks, Gilbert M. Khadiagala, Paul Nugent, and Thomas K. Tieku)