Jitters over President Mursi's performance at the African Union summit in Addis Ababa were overhyped, contends Gamal Nkrumah First impressions last. President Mohamed Mursi's participation in the African Union summit in Addis Ababa was for all intents and purposes a success story. His decision to attend in person impressed fellow African leaders, and what they liked the most about Mursi, after the stuffy former Egyptian president's three decades in power, was his new style of leadership and his conspicuous modesty. Mursi looked like an experienced old-timer. He had a golden opportunity to outline Egypt's African policy, and his peers were keen to interact with Egypt's new democratically elected president. Mursi was in no mood for immediate controversy in Africa over the prickly topic of Nile waters, especially with his hosts, the Ethiopians. Ex-president Hosni Mubarak's African policy was gridlocked and dysfunctional. His lack of interest in African affairs and his adamant refusal to attend African summits since the foiled assassination attempt in Addis Ababa in 1995 did not endear him to Africa's leaders. Mursi was certainly not the belle of Africa's disorderly annual ball. South Africa's Interior Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, the first woman to become AU chairperson, clearly was. Mursi skirted around his predecessor's self-defeating African policy. He cannot, however, afford to be complacent about Egypt's new Africa policy. And, he made that crystal clear in Addis Ababa. Across Africa a turnaround is underway. Africa is endlessly renewing itself. Economic growth rates in several key African countries are soaring. It is against this background that Mursi stressed development concerns, the strengthening of trade and commercial links, and economic cooperation. Mursi also took the opportunity of the AU summit to meet with several African leaders face-to-face for the first time. Among the leaders Mursi met on the sidelines of the summit were Sudanese President Omar Hassan Al-Bashir and South Sudanese President Silva Kiir. It is personal experience that matters most in assessing a newcomer to the African political scene. The fact that Mursi won the presidency precisely because he was a prominent member of the Muslim Brotherhood intrigued many African leaders. Africans have bigger concerns to worry about than the spread of political Islam. Topping the priority among these concerns are underdevelopment, abject poverty and unemployment. These are subjects on which the Sub-Saharan Africans tend to be more sensitive towards than the previous Egyptian government was prepared to admit. So why was there a new sense of confidence and optimism about Egypt's future role in Africa? The obvious answer is that reality lagged behind perceptions of Egypt's economic and political importance to Africa for the past three decades. Mursi paid special tribute to his Ethiopian hosts, singling out Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zennawi for praise. This raised some eyebrows because of recent protests and demonstrations across Ethiopia by the country's large Muslim minority -- roughly 45 per cent of Ethiopia's 85 million people. Perhaps an "Arab Spring" is about to take place in Ethiopia, but Mursi did not mention the grievances of Ethiopia's Muslims, or any other of his co-religionists in the African continent. Ethiopian Muslims want a larger say in the decision-making process in the country, but Mursi was unwilling to be dragged into the domestic affairs of Ethiopia and emphasised that what he really cared about was strengthening bilateral relations. "I insisted on attending in spite of the challenges we face at home in Egypt," Mursi told delegates at the AU summit. He gave a brief expos�� of Egypt's 25 January Revolution and the process of democracy that landed him the top job in the country. "For the first time in history the representative of a democratically elected Egyptian president stands before you," Mursi stressed. He likewise congratulated Senegalese President Macky Sall and his Tunisian counterpart Moncef Marzouqi. Both the Senegalese and Tunisian heads of state attended the AU summit, like Mursi himself, as democratically elected presidents. Mursi's African debut interested his counterparts in Addis Ababa. "Africa is a priority in Egypt's foreign policy. We have a common heritage and we would like to participate fully in the development of the African continent," Mursi explained. In Egyptian eyes, the reason to remain steady in the country's commitment to Africa is as plain as the course of the River Nile. Mursi hinted that Egypt is facing an economic crisis but that he is steering the country out of the economic whirlpool. Egypt's GDP has lurched sickeningly downwards, but Mursi's morale has not. Now Egypt needs to gear up the domestic economy. Then, and only then, can it reach out to Africa in a constructive manner. Mursi assured his African audience that his job will be to sort all this out. It is an oft-told story, but it does not get any less important on repetition. The late Egyptian president Gamal Abdel-Nasser was no great friend of the Muslim Brotherhood, but it was he who did start the long political association on an equal footing with African countries south of the Sahara. It is ironic that Mursi now addresses the wrongs of Mubarak's regime ignoring Africa altogether. Which, I presume, makes it all the more important for Africans to ask whether Mursi's approach is the right one. At his African debut in Addis Ababa, Mursi did not disappoint his African counterparts. To the extent that successive Egyptian governments after Nasser had an African strategy, it was on the face of it a far from attractive one. Most obviously Mubarak failed to embrace Africa wholeheartedly. The most egregious offence in African eyes of the Mubarak regime was that it distanced Egypt from Africa. As defined, Mursi's new courtship of Africa, as far as Africans are concerned, is hard to quibble with. He came across as amiable and far from fanatical. Nasser laid the foundations of Egypt's Africa policy. Now it is time to see if Mursi will be as wise. So far, Mursi is taking a surprisingly, from a secularist viewpoint, sensible approach to African concerns.
