By Adonis Byemelwa
The African Union’s decision to once again “firmly” reject any initiative to recognise Somaliland as an independent entity has landed with a familiar thud across the continent. For many Africans who have followed the AU’s evolution from the OAU days, the language feels well-rehearsed, almost ritualistic, yet increasingly disconnected from lived political realities. It is the kind of statement that sounds authoritative on paper but raises more questions the longer one sits with it.
At first glance, the AU’s position appears straightforward. It leans on the idea that Africa’s stability depends on respecting borders inherited at independence, a notion repeatedly framed as a core continental principle. However, as Wafula Okumu has pointed out, and as many policy practitioners quietly acknowledge, this claim does not hold up under closer scrutiny.
The Constitutive Act of the African Union does not contain an explicit principle declaring borders permanently untouchable. That idea has been repeated so often over the decades that it has hardened into an assumed truth, even when the legal text itself is far more cautious and nuanced.
This matters because history tells a more complicated story than the AU’s statement suggests. Those of us who have worked in or around African regional politics remember how Eritrea emerged as a recognised state in the early 1990s after a long and painful struggle, with African governments ultimately accepting the outcome.
More recently, South Sudan’s independence in 2011 followed years of mediation, referenda, and international engagement in which African institutions played central roles. These were not aberrations. They were deliberate political choices made in response to realities on the ground. To pretend otherwise is to erase chapters of Africa’s own experience.
The repeated invocation of the 1964 Cairo Resolution adds another layer of discomfort. That resolution was adopted at a moment of deep anxiety, when newly independent states feared that endless border disputes could unravel fragile sovereignties.
It was a political compromise, not a sacred decree. It was meant to calm tensions, not to foreclose all future political evolution. Many African diplomats who came of age studying that period understand this instinctively, even if official statements rarely admit it.
Against this backdrop, the Somaliland question feels less like an abstract legal debate and more like a test of intellectual honesty. Somaliland has existed in a political grey zone for more than three decades, developing its own institutions, holding elections, and maintaining a degree of internal stability that stands in stark contrast to the turmoil that has plagued Somalia for much of the same period.
For people who have visited the region, worked with local officials, or engaged communities there, it is challenging to dismiss Somaliland as a mere administrative fiction.
The AU’s categorical rejection, therefore, strikes many observers as emotionally detached from lived experience. It feels as though the organisation is speaking to an Africa frozen in the 1960s, rather than one shaped by civil wars, peace agreements, constitutional experiments, and hard-earned lessons about governance. This dissonance helps explain the frustration expressed in public reactions, where some see the AU as undermining the very pan-African ideals it claims to defend.
There is also an undercurrent of suspicion about external influences. When non-African actors make moves that appear to support Somaliland’s recognition, some Africans instinctively bristle, recalling a long history of foreign powers instrumentalising African politics. That scepticism is understandable.
However, it does not absolve the AU of its responsibility to think independently and honestly. Dismissing Somaliland outright, without acknowledging Africa’s own precedents, risks reinforcing the perception that continental institutions are reactive rather than principled.
What makes this moment particularly striking is how predictable the AU’s response has become: the exact phrases, the same references, the same firm tone.
For citizens, scholars, and practitioners who have spent years engaging with the AU’s peace and integration agenda, this repetition feels less like stability and more like stagnation. It suggests an institution more comfortable defending inherited positions than grappling openly with uncomfortable questions about self-determination and legitimacy.
Eventually, the Somaliland debate is not just about borders. It is about whether African institutions can evolve intellectually and politically. Can the AU acknowledge that its own history complicates the story it tells today? Can it create space for serious, case-by-case discussions without fearing that the entire continental order will collapse? These are the questions quietly being asked in corridors, classrooms, and policy forums across Africa.
By choosing rigid certainty over reflective engagement, the AU risks widening the gap between its declarations and the realities Africans face every day. The cost of that gap is not only credibility but also relevance. Furthermore, for an organisation tasked with shaping Africa’s future, that should be the most unsettling prospect of all.
