“Excellencies, I am ready to serve, my heart is ready, my hands are steady and with your support, I shall get the opportunity to be of service to Africa, the cradle of mankind. I am made in Eastern Africa for Africa,” that was Raila Odinga’s solemn plea to the continent as he embarked on his journey to clinch the African Union Commission chairmanship yesterday.

In his high powered audience at the State House Nairobi included four heads of state, two former heads of state and a prime minister.

They included the current East Africa Community (EAC) chairman and South Sudan President Salva Kiir Mayardit, Tanzania President Samia Suluhu Hassan, Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni, Rwanda’s State Minister for Foreign Affairs James Kabarebe and Burundian Prime Minister Gervais Ndirakobuca and former Presidents Jakaya Kikwete (Tanzania) and Olusegun Obasanjo (Nigeria).

Dignified gathering

It is this dignified gathering that Raila reached out to yesterday as he was unveiled as Kenya’s candidate for the high profile position.

“Kindly buy my vision, the charge is 34 plus votes in the first round. I particularly appeal to fellow East Africans, that we walk this journey together and go to Addis as a team in February 2025,” Raila pleaded.

In the elections set for February next year, Raila will square it out with Madagascar’s Richard Randriamandrato, Djibouti Foreign Affairs Minister Mahmoud Ali Youssouf and Anil Kumarsingh Gayan to succeed the Moussa Faki Mahamat from Chad.

Raila said if elected to office, his vision will be to unite the continent so that it can speak in one voice against the challenges it is facing.

He vowed to utilise the transition period to critically analyse the existing proposals for reforms and building capacity of the commission and follow up on the implementation of the reports so far formulated.

“I envisage an Africa where our visionary sloganeering will translate into strategic action for the transformation of our continent. I plan to work with you, Your Excellencies, and make the AU more people-centred and serve the interests of the vast voiceless majority of Africans,” Raila assured the high-profile meeting.

Policies, geoplolitics balance

Noting that decision-making at AUC must be backed by a balance between policies and geopolitics, he emphasized that the Head of Governments must join him in integrating the continent to wade off its enemies who are hell-bent on sowing seeds of disunity among Africans.

“I dream of an Africa where those borders and colonial languages no longer divide us. We don’t want Africans to be divided as Anglophones, Francophones and Lusophones. I want them to be Africophones. The hills of Kenya, the deserts of the Sahara and the Kalahari, the lakes of the Great Rift, the rainforests of Central Africa, from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic, Africa must be one. One is resilience and hope for a bright future transmitted to our young people,” he said.

He went on: “My selection to be Kenya’s candidate is not about one man’s ambition, but an African’s journey to serve the motherland. Indeed, I plan to constitute my cabinet of chairpersons with a continental outlook.”

The former Kenyan Prime Minister was emphatic that he was an Afro-optimist and not an Afro-pessimist, explaining to the delegation that Afro-pessimists are those people who have given up on Africa, who say Africa is a wasted continent.

He added that Afro-optimists are those people who believe in Africa’s development and that Africa can be developed with the efforts of the African people.

Top on Raila’s plan, he said, was to work with governments to make AU more people-centred and serve the interests of the vast voiceless majority of Africans. According to Raila, Africa will account for eleven of the world’s 20 fastest-growing economies this year and comes second after Asia where the continental economy is highly rising.

But even as remarkable growth is registered in Africa, Kenya’s candidate noted that the development still grapples with emerging challenges and vulnerabilities, including identity conflicts and wars, hunger, poverty, violent extremism, adverse climate change, acute unemployment among the youth, transboundary pandemics and infectious diseases such as Mpox, and threats to human security and dignity.

“Today, the youth are drowning in the Mediterranean, trying to get greener pastures in Europe, it’s a shame. We must arrest this trend and ensure that we create a conducive environment within the continent here and the youth do not have to flee to Europe.

And this will only happen if Africa works together as a united continent,” he said. With Africa housing the worst human displacement crisis in the world currently due to the ongoing war in Sudan, Raila told the delegates that at the AUC he will prioritise calling for peace in all conflict-torn regions.

“The guns are not silent on the continent. We will work to ensure that guns are silent so that we can be able to have a peaceful development,” he said. He further emphasized that African countries must now unite to confront the biggest challenge the continent is facing the effects of climate change. The candidate warned that individual countries cannot secure compensation for the losses of climate change by the large emitters of pollutants.

Africa today, he said suffers from twin disasters, droughts and floods yet it has emitted very little of the carbon that is polluting the world.

“Africa needs to be compensated. This cannot come if Africa goes to negotiate as individual countries. If we go and talk as Kenya, as Uganda, Tanzania, Nigeria, Mozambique, Egypt or Algeria, the rest of the major offenders will not listen to us. But when we go and talk as Africa, they must listen to us and be able to get a fair deal on the issue of climate change,” he added.

Raila said that he will champion the campaign on the greening of Africa to reverse desertification and conserve the world’s second carbon sink located in the tropical forest of the Democratic Republic of Congo. To improve the living standards of Africa, Raila said that inter-African trade must be encouraged and that the continent must stop blaming other continents for exploitation and trade imbalances.

He said: “Africa is wasting a lot of time searching for markets where they put very unequal terms to our goods coming from Africa. Inter-African trade today stands at only 15 per cent. Inter-European trade stands at 70 per cent. Inter-Asian trade stands at 60 per cent. Even inter-South American trade stands at 35 per cent. We need to ensure that Africa trades more with itself.”

Raila called on governments to abolish non-tariff barriers which have been imposed by other African countries against goods from neighbouring countries to address the constraints that are hurting the inter-Africa trade.