Ten key policy recommendations emerged from the Cape Town policy seminar: 1. Firstly, it was suggested that the AU Commission should engage more strategically with African civil society, think tanks, the private sector, and the philanthropic sector in order to implement its mandate more effectively. 2. There is an urgent need to sanction non-performing AU staff members and to implement results-based management at the AU Commission in Addis Ababa. Recruitment, retention, and training of personnel should be greatly improved. 3. The AU’s continental early warning system needs greater coordination with the mechanisms of sub-regional bodies. 4. There is an urgent need to create institutionalised mechanisms for effective coordination between the AU’s Peace and Security Council and the organs of the RECs. 5. Regional integration in Africa should take into account the configuration of interests in member states, and put in place mechanisms to compensate groups that may lose out from integration. There is an urgent need to cultivate a national entrepreneurial class to drive socioeconomic development across Africa. The continent also needs more “Afrocrats” – young, highly competent officials with a strong commitment to Pan-Africanism, similar to many of the EU’s “Eurocrats”. 6. The AU needs to rationalise relations between the RECs and the African Economic Community in light of the multiple membership of the former. It might also be necessary to create a smaller grouping of African states in which conditions for entry involve sound economic and political performance, resulting in greater aid and investment for its members. 7. In line with the AU’s Common African Position, five key principles should underpin relations between the AU and the UN: promotion of collective security in the context of Chapter VIII of the UN Charter; support for African ownership and priority-setting; fostering a partnership on the basis of consultative decision-making, division of labour, and burden sharing; mutual respect and adherence to the principle of comparative advantage; and establishment of a division of labour underpinned by the concept of complementarity. 8. The EU-UN joint consultative mechanism must, however, be made more effective in order to facilitate cooperation between both organisations in planning, training, communication, and sharing “best practices” in African peace operations, while fostering trilateral cooperation with the AU.
