> I am hoping a group of mostly stable countries band together and make it happen first. My founders list would be Namibia, Botswana, Angola, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, and Kenya. A nice list stretching from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean. These are moderate names, not often in the news and stable for the most part. If South Africa would join that would be a big win... but I am hoping one of the smaller countries takes leadership initially.

I'm guessing you're pulling this list mostly on the basis on geographical proximity and "these haven't been in the news", as opposed to examples of African success. Angola definitely shouldn't be on that list (it's basically a kleptocratic petrostate à la Algeria), and Kenya is eyebrow-worthy.

In general, the best-run states of Africa are geographically dispersed. The island nations of Cape Verde, Seychelles, and Mauritius; Botswana and Namibia; Tunisia and Morocco; maybe Gabon and Ghana will generally top all of the various lists of economically successful, well-run, well-developed, democratically free. Rwanda would be on the list were it not for being fairly autocratic--most notably, it's a very rare example of an autocratic country that's fairly free of corruption. South Africa is notable for pretty much backsliding on all of these metrics, despite starting from a relatively high position.

The AU is split up into multiple blocs, each supposedly working towards eventual unity. The East African bloc (Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, and Uganda) has generally been the furthest along, and the South African bloc (in particular, Namibia, Botswana, South Africa, Swaziland, and Lesotho) the second. It should be noted, though, that actual adherence to the currently-enacted treaties can be rather thin on the ground.

Reading the GP made me immediately think of India as a counterexample, nice to see someone else did too. :)

India was never a "country" before the Brits, it was just a geographic region with some commonalities. Various empires have covered large swathes of India, but there wasn't any common identity. By being lumped into a single country by the British, India got this identity.

India has many problems but "regionalism" isn't one of them. It exists and causes issues every now and then, but not too much.

However, India has had a catalyst here as you mention. The first was having little choice in forming this union[1], and the second was the "common enemy" of the British bonding otherwise-distinct groups of people together.

Ironically, the country most Indians hate the most is Pakistan, despite it having been part of the "common identity" and having the same catalysts. Part of this is deliberate divide-and-conquer (divide-and-cripple, really, this was done after the country was conquered; during the independence process) by the British, part of it is simple religious hatred. Though India has a much nicer relationship with, say, Afghanistan (but some of the reasons for that involve Pakistan ... so it's nuanced).

So if India had never been a single nation and had to form an AU- or EU-like union, its quite possible that the relations between various regions would have been much more strained -- India-Pakistan relations are an example of how it could have gone. This is all speculation and Africa is very different anyway, so I'm not quite sure if this will be a problem there. I'm optimistic.

[1]: Though many leaders from the revolutionary movement have a hand in avoiding the fragmentation of some parts of India, which was on the table. But the common "Indian" identity existed before independence, due to being part of the same colony.

That's the point. If the EU is more homogeneous and it has some serious issues, then a similar union in somewhere with even greater diversity may be prone to the same issues or worse (note: I'm just paraphrasing the poster for clarification - I'm not knowledgable enough on the AU to comment on whether this is true)