Ibrahim expressed his dismay about AU’s excessive dependence, stating that ‘70% of the 650 million annual budget of the  AU is funded by foreigners is a farce.’ Faki agreed and added that ‘it is actually frustrating.’ Instructively, in an exclusive interview for Amani Africa’s podcast, The Pan Africanist, the new AU Commission Chairperson, Mohamoud Ali Youssouf, identified the issue of financing as a major priority area for his chairship of the AU Commission.

The deserved public criticism of the failure of African leaders to fund the AU comes as the AU’s landmark decision towards enhancing self-financing marks its ten-year anniversary this June. As part of her consequential tenure that set in motion the pioneer initiatives of AU’s Agenda 2063, including the AfCFTA, one of the issues that Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma championed was to address the perennial challenge of heavy dependency on external sources in the financing of the AU. It culminated in two key policy decisions.

AU member states’ Johannesburg and Kigali ambitions

The first was the June 2015 summit held in Johannesburg, South Africa, where the AU Assembly adopted a decision, Assembly/AU/Dec.578 (XXV) on the Scale of Assessment and Alternative Sources of Financing of the AU. One of the major commitments that AU member states made under Assembly decision 578 was to fund 100 per cent of the operational budget, 75 per cent of the program budget and 25 per cent of the AU’s peace operations budget.

The second was the July 2016 Kigali summit that settled the question of the sourcing of the funds for realising the decision adopted in Johannesburg. Accordingly, the Kigali AU summit adopted Assembly/AU/Dec.605(XXVII) decision which committed to ‘institute and implement a 0.2 per cent levy on all eligible imported goods into the Continent to finance AU Operational, Program and Peace Support Operations Budget starting from the year 2017.’

AU’s non-implementation malady

Signifying the fast-expanding gulf between the ambitions of AU summit outcomes and the realities of acting on such outcomes, the Johannesburg and Kigali decisions have faced the same fate as other decisions of the AU – non-implementation. This malady of non-implementation that became prominent during Faki’s tenure promoted him to lament during his address of the opening of the February 2024 AU summit that ‘the frantic tendency to make decisions without real political will to implement them, has grown to such an extent that it has become devastating to our individual and collective credibility.’

As a result, little progress has been made in the ambition of the financial reforms introduced since Johannesburg to ensure financial autonomy and reduced dependency and secure timely, adequate, reliable and predictable payments by member states of their assessed contributions.

The story that the 2025 AU budget tells

The 2025 budget of the AU, adopted during the 45^th ordinary session of the Executive Council held in Accra, Ghana in July 2024, was US$608,248,415. Of these, the regular budget was at US$555,319,415. The operational budget to which AU member states contributed 98 per cent, short of 2 per cent from the Johannesburg target, was only 167,045,485. By contrast, AU member states, along with African institutions and internal sources, covered only 22.5 % of the US$ 388,273,929 programme budget of the AU. While this represents a notable increase from the less than 6 per cent contribution of member states to the programme budget in 2015, it is a far cry from the Johannesburg target, which member states committed to realise by 2025. Considering the significance of the programme budget for advancing the major AU objectives, the failure to meet the Johannesburg target is emblematic of the growing gulf between the policy ambitions of the AU and its actual performance.

When it comes to member states’ contribution to peace operations, the lack of progress becomes even more glaring. The July 2024 Executive Council decision (EX.CL/Dec.1265(XLV) carrying the 2025 budget indicated that ‘peace support operations with a budget of US$52,929,131’ was ‘funded by International Partners.’

What emerges from the 2025 AU budget is that the AU has met the Johannesburg target only in relation to its operational budget. The portion of member states’ contribution to the overall AU budget renders the distance between the Johannesburg target and where the AU stands today stark. The overall budget of the AU for 2025, as captured in the July 2024 Executive Council decision, puts the balance of contributions between AU member states and partners at 32.9 per cent and 58.1 per cent, respectively.

Explaining the ‘farce’ that is the state of AU’s self-financing

A major factor behind this dismal state of the self-financing of the AU is the non-implementation of the Kigali AU summit decision. In 2018, the AU reported that only 16 of the AU member states were implementing the Kigali decision of collecting the 0.2 levy. Between that time and 2025, that number increased by only one.

Another major factor that impeded the growth of member states’ contribution to programme operations budgets was the 2019 decision of the AU capping member states’ contribution at $250 million. The result of this capping is that much of the member states’ contribution ends up funding the operational budget and leaving only small portion of as the remaining balance for the programme budget.

Additionally, despite the ambition of the AU’s financial reform to move away from reliance on a few member states, the AU did not succeed in achieving this ambition. As such, the continuing reliance on a few countries constrains the scope for expanding the contribution of member states for achieving ownership. The AU Commission Chairperson, Youssouf, told The Pan Africanist that the formula for mobilising the contributions of member states has created heavy reliance on a few countries. As he put it, ‘we need to think about a better sharing of the burden (of AU financing) …we have to look into the formula again.’

Further compounding the dismal state of the financing of the AU is the negative growth of member states’ contributions since the time of COVID-19. As the AU Commission Deputy Chairperson, Selma Haddadi, reminded members of the PRC in her address to the opening of the 50^th ordinary session of the Permanent Representatives Committee (PRC) of the AU on 9 June 2025, ‘the African Union’s approved budget has experienced a negative growth rate of 6 per cent, despite the establishment of new organs and the expansion of its mandates.’ She went on to note that  ‘[a]lthough Member States’ contributions have been capped at US$250 million since 2019, actual assessed contributions have consistently fallen short of this ceiling.’ In fact, the statutory contribution of member states was capped at $200 million for 2025.

There is also the issue of delay or non-payment of assessed contributions on time and in full. Following the adoption of the three-tier sanctions regime in 2018 on payment of assessed contributions and the follow-up of the sanctions regime, the payment of member states has improved significantly. However, the fact that a significant number of member states, including major contributors, effect payment as late as the middle of the year represents a challenge. For the 2024 budget, the AU Ministerial Committee on Scale of Assessment reported that 13 member states did not pay into the 2024 regular budget, and a further five member states made only partial payment as of 31st December 2024.

The price AU is paying for the poor state of its funding

The dismal state of progress in meeting the Johannesburg targets entails dire consequences for the functioning of the continental body. As the Deputy Chairperson pointed out, apart from perpetuating heavy reliance on external funding and thereby differing the ambition of ownership, the funding challenge significantly constrained the AUC’s capacity to effectively implement the decisions of the Policy Organs and strategic priorities.’ Additionally, this funding constraint, Haddadi pointed out, ‘has significantly hindered the effective implementation of security and safety standards.’

AU Commission Deputy Chairperson invited member states to provide ‘guidance on the immediate way forward’ and engage in ‘reflection on this critical issue of the financial sustainability of our Union and its impact on our operations.’ In his exclusive interview with The Pan-Africanist Chairperson Youssouf, apart from proposing the revisiting of the burden sharing, he emphasised the need for other sources of financing such as the private sector and innovative finance sources.

Enter the new AU Commission leadership

Signifying the attention the new AU leadership attaches to this issue, during the opening session of the 50^th Ordinary Session of the PRC, the financing woes afflicting the AU took prime place in the speech of the Deputy Chairperson (DCP) of the AU Commission. One third of the speech was dedicated to this issue.

The new AU Commission leadership is on target in prioritising the issue of the funding of the AU. ‘In (my) vision,’ the Chairperson told The Pan Africanist, ‘the mobilisation of resources is central.’ Echoeing Mo Ibrahim’s comments, Youssouf noted that ‘You can not envisage… the possibility …of ownership of the programmes while waiting the support of partners’.

It will be quite a success if this focused prioritisation of addressing the challenge of AU funding by the new AU Commission leadership leads to enabling member states to deliver on the long-delayed commitment of funding at least 75 per cent of the programme budget of the AU. While one hopes that Youssouf and Haddadi succeed in this quest, it remains to be seen how they will catalyse the required collective will of member states for overcoming the ‘farce’ that is the funding of the AU.