Chad: Nation-building, Security and OAU Peacekeeping

Abstract

Proposals to set up an Organisation of African Unity (OAU) military high command or peacekeeping or security force are not new. Such suggestions were made initially during the Congo (now Zaire) crisis soon after that country attained independence from Belgium in June 1960. Sensing creeping neo-colonialism and believing that African independence was meaningless unless Africans themselves could settle their own conflicts, Ghana’s President Kwame Nkrumah urged the establishment of an all-African high command that would fulfil such a role and contain extra-African military threats. Debate on Nkrumah’s proposals continued up to and after the OAU was established in May 1963, but his ideas were not concretised.