African leaders should admit that a caricature of the European Union can’t possibly work for Africa.

BY GEORGE B.N. AYITTEY| Britain’s vote to ditch the European Union offers the chance of a new beginning — not just for the EU, and the U.K., but for Africa. Since most countries on the continent gained independence in the 1960s and 1970s, they have mindlessly mimicked Western political institutions. Rome has a basilica; so, too, must Yamoussoukro in Ivory Coast. France once had an emperor, so Jean-Bédel Bokassa spent $25 million on a coronation ceremony in the Central African Republic. The United States has a space center. Now Nigeria does too, at the cost of $89 million, though more than half its population lives on less than $1.25 per day. Of the putrid carcasses of failed foreign systems that litter the continent, none is more rancid than the African Union, which, as it happens, was modeled on the EU.

Since at least the start of the global financial crisis, and certainly since last month’s Brexit referendum, the EU has proved it can’t work for Europe. African leaders should now admit that a meretricious caricature of it can’t possibly work for Africa CONTINUE