Senegalese president Abdoulaye Wade declared on Wednesday in Dakar that the government of the African Union (AU) will be put in place in January 2010 while the United States of Africa will be proclaimed in 2017. Speaking at the opening ceremony of a two-day international symposium on the Great Green Wall (GGW), he said that in six months, an extraordinary AU meeting would be held to adopt the recommendations arising from the organisation’s last summit, early this month in Addis Ababa, which provided for the establishment of the AU Authority to coordinate efforts geared towards establishing the United States of Africa. President Wade said after this meeting the countries were expected to adopt the new texts, before promulgating them. He also revealed that at the just-ended AU summit, a “Group of 20 African countries were ready to go their own way and set up a Federal Union. We primarily had the idea of establishing a Federal Union. Eventually, we agreed to the resolutions of the summit providing for the establishment of an Authority.”
