According to the text of the AU resolution, the organization urged President Mugabe and Movement for Democratic Change leader Tsvangirai to honor their promises to hold talks aimed at fostering national stability and unity of the Zimbabwean people. The AU resolution can be seen as a result that keeps the two stands mentioned above in balance and shows the regional group hopes Zimbabwe would be inspired by the formula with which Kenya formed its coalition government and work toward restoring stability and reviving the economy.
Though faced with huge challenges Africa has a lot of opportunities, potential and hope for development. African nations have made remarkable progress in perfecting macro-economic management, fine-tuning economic operation mechanism, improving the internal and external environment for economic development and strengthening regional economic cooperation, as the continent's economic development has been running in rehabilitative growth mode since the 1990s.
The African economy has not only maintained an average annual growth rate of 6 percent but also kept the inflation rate under two digits. To date, despite such new challenges as a food crisis and rising energy price, authoritative rating institutions both in and outside the continent such as the International Monetary Fund, UN Economic Commission for Africa and African Development Bank have yet to downgrade their predictions of Africa's economic growth in 2008 and 2009 and remain optimistic about their assessment that the continent is still capable of achieving a growth rate of around 6 percent.
The latest AU summit put forth some proposals for dealing with interim and long-term food problems, including increasing investment in agricultural production, strengthening the monitoring and control of speculation in agricultural trade and establishing grain reserves in African countries. Member-states at the summit unanimously pledged they would introduce new measures aimed at increasing capital injection into farming, improving the efficiency of water use and beefing up regional economic integration.
Difficult market circulation and low-level economic integration have been a major bottleneck hampering Africa's grain production. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization suggests in its latest report that, in order to alleviate the food crisis threatening the African continent, it is necessary to activate a special agenda beside the process of African economic integration that will allow a few strategic commodities, including food, to be traded freely in Africa ahead of other regions.
This is really a refreshing idea, which would not only help solve the continent's food shortage but also greatly boost the regional economic integration if it gets implemented.
Africa's opportunity for further development can also be found in the unprecedented attention from the international community in recent years. The 53 nations on the continent not only have a wealth of natural and human resources, especially certain rare mineral resources that are much sought-after in the world, but also constitute half of the Non-aligned Movement and nearly one-third of the UN membership. They are a force that simply cannot be overlooked when it comes to completing an international agenda.
