UN Assembly focuses on Africa’s hotspots as Angola gets new leader

The General Assembly in session on September 23, 2017. World leaders are gathering in New York for the annual UN meetings. Africa has featured in many discussions.
PHOTO | KEVIN HAGEN | AFP

What you need to know:

  • More than 100 heads of state participated in talks on global issues, with several making their debut at the Assembly.

  • Among the newcomers were presidents Donald Trump of the US and France’s Emmanuel Macron.

For several days, the world’s focus has been on New York, where top diplomats were gathered for the 72nd United Nations General Assembly.

More than 100 heads of state participated in talks on global issues, with several making their debut at the Assembly.

Among the newcomers were presidents Donald Trump of the US and France’s Emmanuel Macron.

The former is an outspoken critic of the UN while Macron is viewed as having different views on such matters as the Paris Agreement on climate change.

Remarkably, even as the major UN annual event opened on Tuesday, many African countries were at a crossroads.

Amid the numerous setbacks in the unfurling of evolution to democracy in Africa, the continent also produced good stories.

ORDERLY LEADERSHIP

Angola, for example, has just negotiated an orderly leadership change and is poised to welcome a new president on Tuesday.

That auspicious day will see the inauguration of former defence minister João Lourenço as president, hopefully ushering a new era.

Not surprisingly, the Angolan election — only the fourth since independence from Portugal in 1975 and the third since the end of the war in 2002 — elicited goodwill from around the globe.

Congratulatory messages have been flooding in, albeit amid talk that the new leader is just a crony of outgoing long-term President José Eduardo dos Santos.

Having been in power for 38 years, dos Santos was also the head of the MPLA party, whose 42-year dominance of the country the new president will be extending.

Such details aside, the president-elect and the man expected to become Africa’s newest leader has been congratulated by an array of eminent personalities, among them Pope Francis.

LIBERIAN ELECTION

Compliments also came from the US State Department and the leaders of Russia, China, Portugal, France, Brazil, Cameroon, Guinea Bissau, Togo among others.

With the Angolan succession concluded, focus now remains on the Liberian presidential election on October 10 and the pivotal Kenyan rerun on October 26.

Serving as it does as the “main deliberative, policy-making and representative organ” of the 193-member global agency, the UN General Assembly’s meetings are crucial.

Despite the fact that the decisions are not legally binding, their major import is that they set the agenda for ensuing actions of the Security Council.  Although there was a raft of weightier global issues scheduled for deliberation by delegates, reasonable attention was paid to African matters.

There were, for instance, specific meetings devoted to finding solutions relating to alarming political situations in hotspots.

Specifically targeted for attention and scrutiny were the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

MINISTERIAL MEETING

On September 19, a high-level ministerial meeting on the Central African Republic was held on the margins of the ordinary session of the General Assembly.

The meeting was chaired by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and the leader of the troubled country Faustin-Archange Touadéra. Also in attendance was Moussa Faki Mahamat, the AU Commission chairman.

A similar meeting was convened on the same day regarding the DR Congo, focusing on preparations for long-awaited elections.

The two meetings were organised in partnership with players on African and global political scene, including the Economic Community of Central African States, the EU and the World Bank.

Specific attention was paid to development issues on the continent, amid pointers that Africa increasingly has to sort out its problems.