AU institutional reform under Moussa Faki Mahamat — what was attempted, what stuck

<p>Moussa Faki Mahamat completed his second four-year term as African Union Commission Chairperson in March 2025, after eight years that included the formal AfCFTA launch, the Common African Position on COVID-19 vaccines, the AU&#x27;s accession to the G20 (September 2023), and the most ambitious institutional reform programme since the OAU-to-AU transition in 2002. The reform agenda was substantial. The delivery was partial. Both are worth examining.</p> <p>The Kagame Reform Initiative, formally launched in 2017, identified four structural weaknesses: financial dependence on external donors (over 70% of the AU budget at the time was donor-funded), institutional drift (overlapping mandates across the Commission, PRC, NEPAD, and specialised agencies), weak implementation tracking, and capacity gaps in key Commission departments. The reform proposed: a 0.2% levy on eligible imports to self-finance the AU; rationalisation of specialised agencies; a peer-review enforcement mechanism for member-state commitments.</p> <p>What was achieved on financing: 27 member states had implemented some version of the 0.2% levy by 2024, generating approximately USD 130 million annually toward the AU&#x27;s programme budget. The aspiration was 100% self-financing of operational budgets; the actual achievement is roughly 50%. The remaining gap is filled by EU, US, and Chinese contributions, with the geopolitical conditionalities that come with them.</p> <p>What was achieved on rationalisation: NEPAD was integrated into the AU Development Agency (AUDA-NEPAD); the African Peer Review Mechanism was strengthened with new accession criteria; the Specialised Technical Committees were consolidated. What was not achieved: the Commission&#x27;s department structure remained largely unchanged, with personnel ratios and managerial bottlenecks persistent across the Faki tenure. The external evaluator reports from 2023 noted that decision-cycle times had not improved.</p> <p>What the AU did deliver under Faki was specific operational success on AfCFTA (operational ratification by 47 of 54 states), on G20 accession (formal seat secured at the New Delhi summit), and on early COVID-19 vaccine acquisition (the AVATT mechanism). What it did not deliver was effective conflict-prevention capacity. The Peace and Security Council&#x27;s responses to the Sahel coups, the Sudan war, the eastern DRC conflict, the Tigray war — all were institutionally inadequate to the scale of the crises.</p> <p>Mahmoud Ali Youssouf, who took over in March 2025, inherits an institution that has professionalised at the technical-secretariat level while remaining hostage to member-state political incoherence at the political level. Carlos Lopes has argued that the AU&#x27;s structural design — consensus-based decision-making among 54 sovereign equals — produces an inevitable ceiling on what the institution can deliver. Faki&#x27;s tenure tested that ceiling and found it real. The reform agenda is unfinished. The institutional honesty of admitting which parts cannot be reformed without treaty amendment is the next test.</p>