OAU adopts the Constitutive Act of the African Union

At Windhoek, leaders signed the declaration and treaty that transformed SADCC into the Southern African Development Community. The shift moved from coordination among majority-ruled states toward a...

More than two thousand participants gathered in Kampala for the Seventh Pan-African Congress, connecting activists and intellectuals from Africa and the diaspora. Its debates addressed new political...

Millions vote in South Africa’s first national election open to all races, ending formal apartheid rule. The achievement reflected mass resistance and international solidarity, while persistent...

OAU member states adopted a protocol to create a regional court for human-rights cases. It extended the institutional architecture built around the African Charter, while access to the court and...

OAU leaders adopted the Sirte Declaration, calling for an accelerated move toward a union and stronger continental institutions. The declaration revived integration ambitions, but debate continued...

The Constitutive Act entered into force after the required ratifications. This legal transition from OAU to AU strengthened continental ambitions around integration, peace and common institutions; the...

The UN conference brings governments and civil society together to address racism, colonialism, slavery and contemporary discrimination. Disputes over reparations and the Middle East revealed sharp...

The AU is launched in Durban, succeeding the OAU. It carries forward a Pan-African ambition for integration and collective action, but its effectiveness remains shaped by member-state politics,...

An AU extraordinary summit approved an amendment explicitly inviting and encouraging full participation by Africans in the diaspora in building the Union. It gave institutional form to a long-standing...

The African Union adopted the Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa. Women’s movements and advocates had pressed for protections on equality, health, political participation and freedom from...