A total of seven Africans have become chairpersons of the AU. Of those seven individuals, only one South African woman has ascended to join that list of the selected few. The government-sponsored all seven AU Chairpersons’ candidacies in power. All seven chairpersons had a strong background in the government of their countries. There is not even a single outsider who was sponsored by other than African governments in power, but whoever sailed to the topmost position in the AU. It is a closed conduit of African government insiders. With the exception of Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma of South Africa, the rest of the chairpersons were Francophonie and/or members of the Arab League or COMESA or a combination of both. That political stranglehold illustrates the clout COMESA, Francophone countries and the Arab League hold sway over the AU politics. Attached hereby is the chronological compilation of the biographies of the former and current AU chairpersons.
1) Ivorian Amara Essy – 80 years. (2002 – 2003).
He was in the office from 9 July 2002 – 16 September 2003. Amara Essy (born 20 December 1944 is a diplomat from Ivory Coast. Secretary General of the AU, preceded by Dr. Salim Ahmed Salim of Tanzania, from 17 September 2001 to 9 July 2002. In July 2001, Essy was elected head of the OAU, which was in the process of transforming itself into the African Union (AU)—a new organization with dramatically enhanced powers. Whereas the OAU had been required to respect each member’s territorial sovereignty, the AU would be able to intervene in the internal affairs of countries to stop crimes against humanity, violations of human rights, and genocide. On July 9, 2002, Essy became interim chairperson of the newly established AU. A year later, he was succeeded in that post by Alpha Konaré. In 2009, Essy was appointed the AU’s envoy to Madagascar to assess that country’s political crisis.
2) Malian Alpha Oumar Konare. – 79 years. (2003 to 2008)
Rumour has it that former President Alpha Oumar Konaré resigned from his presidency of the African Union Commission in February to re-enter Malian politics. He once retorted, “We do not want a cosmetic attitude but real funding for development and for Africa’s democratisation.” Former AU Chairman Alpha Oumar Konaré stated this, leaving unspoken what many delegates emphasised off the record—that they were not going to replace one exploiter from the West with another from the developing world…
Alpha Oumar Konaré (born 2 February 1946) is a Malian politician, professor, historian and archaeologist who served as President of Mali for two five-year terms from 1992 to 2002 and was Chairperson of the African Union Commission from 2003 to 2008.
3) Gabonese diplomat Jean Ping – 82 years. (2008 to 2012).
Jean Ping, born 24 November 194,2 is a Gabonese diplomat and politician who served as Chair of the African Union Commission from 2008 to 2012. Born to a Chinese father and a Gabonese mother, he is the first individual of Chinese descent to lead the executive branch of the African Union.
He served as the Minister of State and Minister of Foreign Affairs, Cooperation, and Francophonie of the Gabonese Republic from 1999 to 2008 and as President of the United Nations General Assembly from 2004 to 2005. He ran against President Ali Bongo in the 2016 Gabonese presidential election.
Ping was born in Omboué, a small town on the Fernan Vaz lagoon south of Port-Gentil. His father, Cheng Zhiping, called Wang Ping by the Gabonese, was a Chinese person from Wenzhou, Zhejiang, who was recruited as a labourer in the 1920s and became a timber harvester. Cheng, who married Germaine Anina, a Gabonese daughter of a tribal chief who was born in Zaire, encouraged his son to study in France with a scholarship from the Gabonese government.
Ping obtained a doctorate in economic science from the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne in 1975, under René Passet.
In 1972, Ping began working as an international civil servant at UNESCO in Paris. From 1978 to 1984, he served as Gabon’s Permanent Delegate to UNESCO before becoming involved in his country’s politics. In 1993, he became president of OPEC.
In 2004, Ping was elected the 59th President of the United Nations General Assembly. In 2008, he was elected Chairperson of the Commission of the African Union in the first round, but he left the role in 2012.
On 24 September 2016, Bongo was declared the victor by the Constitutional Court with 50.66% of the votes, ahead of Ping with 47.24%.] Following the verdict, Ping, who had appealed to the high court under pressure from the international community, spoke to the Gabonese people: “Yesterday, the Court made its ruling despite and against everything, trampling over the sovereignty of the Gabonese people, pointedly ignoring the national and international community’s urgent calls for transparency. But the ruling won’t unite or satisfy the Gabonese people because the people of Gabon won’t recognize it. Nor will the international community give it any credence.”
4) Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma – 76 years (2012 – 2015)
Nkosazana Clarice Dlamini-Zuma (née Dlamini; born 27 January 1949), sometimes referred to by her initials NDZ, is a South African politician, medical doctor and former anti-apartheid activist. A longstanding member of the African National Congress (ANC), she currently serves as a Chancellor of the University of Limpopo.
Dlamini-Zuma was born and educated in the former Natal province, where, as a student, she became involved in the Black Consciousness Movement through the South African Students’ Organisation. Between 1976 and 1990, she lived in exile outside South Africa, primarily in the United Kingdom and Swaziland, where she practised medicine and engaged in ANC activism.
Since 1994, Dlamini-Zuma has served in the cabinet of every post-apartheid South African president. She was Minister of Health under President Nelson Mandela and Minister of Foreign Affairs for ten years under Presidents Thabo Mbeki and Kgalema Motlanthe. During the first term of President Jacob Zuma, she was Minister of Home
Affairs, in which portfolio she was credited with turning around a dysfunctional department. During President Cyril Ramaphosa’s second term, she was briefly also Minister of Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities.
Under President Cyril Ramaphosa, she served as Minister in the Presidency for Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation, with responsibility for the National Planning Commission, before becoming Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, in which capacity she had a prominent and controversial role in regulating South Africa’s lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic. She was absent from the South African government between October 2012 and January 2017, when she served as the Chairperson of the African Union Commission, making her the first woman to lead either that organisation or its predecessor, the Organisation of African Unity. Her tenure in that position was also controversial.
She has been a member of the ANC’s National Executive Committee since the early 1990s and has twice unsuccessfully campaigned for leadership positions in the party. In 2007, at the ANC’s 52nd National Conference, Motlanthe defeated her to win the deputy presidency; at the 54th National Conference in 2017, she narrowly lost the ANC presidency to the current incumbent, Ramaphosa.
In 1994, after South Africa’s first election under universal suffrage, Dlamini-Zuma was appointed as Minister of Health in the cabinet of President Nelson Mandela, where she continued the work of her predecessor, Rina Venter, in racially desegregating the health system and broadening state anti-tobacco measures. In 1999, Dlamini-Zuma introduced the Tobacco Products Amendment Bill, which made it illegal to smoke in public buildings. Her term also coincided with the beginning of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in South Africa. Despite Dlamini-Zuma’s history of HIV/AIDS activism, including a stint on the National Aids Coordinating Committee in 1992 and a period as Deputy Chairperson of the United Nations AIDS programme (UNAIDS) in 1995, she and her Ministry were criticised for publicly supporting Virodene, a “quack remedy” for HIV/AIDS.
Dr Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma is an undisputed trailblazer in uplifting and empowering women across the African continent. In 2012, the heads of state in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, elected her chairperson of the African Union Commission. She is the first woman to lead the continental organisation, including its predecessor, the Organisation of African Unity.
5) Mussa Faki 64 years (2017 – 2024).
Moussa Faki Mahamat, born 21 June 1960, is a Chadian politician and diplomat who has been the elected Chairperson of the African Union Commission since 14 March 2017. He was previously the Prime Minister of Chad from 24 June 2003 to 4 February 2005 and Minister of Foreign Affairs from April 2008 to January 2017. Faki, a member of the ruling Patriotic Salvation Movement (MPS), belongs to the Zaghawa ethnic group, the same group as the late President Idriss Déby.
On 6 February 2021, he was re-elected as Chairperson of the African Union Commission for another four-year term from 2021 to 2024.
Faki was born in the town of Biltine in eastern Chad. He attended university in Brazzaville in the Republic of the Congo, where he studied law. He went into exile when Hissein Habré took power on June 7, 1982, and joined the Democratic Revolutionary Council headed by Acheikh Ibn Oumar; however, he did not return to Chad when Acheikh joined with Habré in 1988. He eventually returned on 7 June 1991, after Déby took power. He was director-general of two ministries before serving as the Director-General of the National Sugar Company (SONASUT) between 1996 and 1999.
Subsequently, he served as Director of the Cabinet of President Déby from March 1999 to July 2002, and he was Déby’s campaign director for the May 2001 presidential election. Faki was then appointed as Minister of Public Works and Transport in the government of Prime Minister Haroun Kabadi, which was named on June 12, 2002. After a year in that post, he was appointed as Prime Minister by Déby on June 24, 2003, replacing Kabadi. Faki resigned in early February 2005 amidst a civil service strike and a rumoured quarrel with Déby.
Faki was nominated as a member of the Economic, Social and Cultural Council on 19 January 2007 and was then elected as the Council’s President in mid-February 2007. The government of Prime Minister Youssouf Saleh Abbas announced on April 23, 2008, he was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs. Hussein Brahim Taha was appointed to replace him as Chadian Minister of Foreign Affairs on 5 February 2017. Faki took office as Chairperson of the AU Commission on 14 March 2017.
6) Mahamoud Ali Youssouf- 59 years. (2025 – 2028)
Mahamoud Ali Youssouf (Somali: Maxamed Cali Yuusuf, Arabic: يوسف علي محمود ;born 2 September 1965) is a Djiboutian diplomat and the Chairperson of the African Union Commission. He has served in the government of Djibouti as Minister of Foreign Affairs since 2005.
At the end of his schooling, he obtained his baccalaureate at the Djibouti high school in 1985.
Between 1985 and 1990, he studied foreign languages at the Lumière University Lyon 2. In 1988, he studied business management at the University of
Liverpool. In 1995, he obtained a management magisterium at Université Laval and then prepared a thesis at Université libre de Bruxelles.
Youssouf worked at Djibouti’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and headed its Arab affairs department during the 1990s. He served as Ambassador to Egypt from 1997 to 2001.
Youssouf was appointed as Minister-Delegate for International Cooperation on 4 July 2001.] He was subsequently appointed as Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation on 22 May 2005. In 2006, he visited Japan.
Youssouf chaired the 129th Ordinary Session of the Arab League’s Council of Foreign Ministers in 2008.
Speaking to The New York Times in 2008, Youssouf said that although Djibouti was a small country, it had a sizable port and hoped to develop its economy along the same lines as Dubai. He highlighted the country’s strategic location, which he asserted was better positioned than Dubai.
In April 2024, Djibouti nominated him for the position of Chairperson of the African Union Commission. On 15 February 2025, after seven rounds of voting, he won the elections in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Read more analysis by Rutashubanyuma Nestory
