PAP President Charumbira to Global South Legislators: Turn Dialogue into Action for Integration and Shared Prosperity

The President of the Pan-African Parliament (PAP) H. E. Chief Fortune Charumbira has urged lawmakers from Africa, the Arab world, Latin America and Asia to convert “the power of our assemblies” into concrete measures that advance peace, security and development across the Global South. He stated this while addressing the opening the third South-South Parliamentary Dialogue Forum in Rabat. The two-day forum (28 - 29 April 2025), hosted by Morocco’s House of Councillors under the auspices of King Mohammed VI, brought together presiding officers and committees to craft practical recommendations on economic integration, technology, and parliamentary diplomacy.

The Pan-African Parliament: Custodian of Africa’s Voice

Charumbira reminded delegates that the PAP was created so that “the peoples of Africa” could be directly represented in African Union (AU) decision-making, rather than acting only through their governments. “The PAP … carries the voice and aspirations of the people of Africa in the decision-making processes of the Union,” he stressed, arguing that any genuine Global South platform must therefore include elected African legislators.

Ten Persistent Challenges Facing the Global South

Against the backdrop of geopolitical tension and economic uncertainty, the PAP President listed ten “rudimentary challenges” still plaguing the South. They include food insecurity, resurging conflicts and coups, terrorism, refugee flows, energy shocks, post-pandemic poverty, illicit financial flows, fragmented legal regimes, youth-crippling drug and human-trafficking networks, and restrictions on the free movement of people and goods.

Legislatures as Engines of Solutions

Charumbira argued that parliaments cannot stand idle while executives grapple with these problems. Instead, they must:

1. Harmonise legislation to remove tariff and regulatory obstacles that stifle intra-South trade;
2. Deploy parliamentary diplomacy to de-escalate conflicts from Sudan to the Sahel, filling the vacuum left when executive interventions falter;
3. Reclaim the accountability mandate by exposing corruption that breeds instability, rather than off-loading oversight to independent commissions; and
4. Shape the digital future, passing forward-looking laws that democratize access to artificial intelligence and other frontier technologies.

Senates, he added, are “bastions of maturity and wisdom” and must therefore advise governments candidly and legislate proactively, rather than reacting after crises erupt.

Visa Barriers Sabotage Continental Cohesion

Recounting his own arduous route—Harare → Dubai → Rabat—Charumbira illustrated how weak intra-African air links and cumbersome visa regimes undercut talk of integration. PAP delegates, he noted, required Moroccan visas issued on arrival because Zimbabwe for example, lacks a Moroccan consulate. “If we are really serious about continental integration … we need to get the basics right,” he warned, urging African states to emulate the EU’s Schengen model with an AU-wide travel document.

Backing AU Flagship Integration Projects

The President singled out two AU-led initiatives as game-changers demanding unwavering parliamentary support:

• African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). Once fully ratified and implemented, the AfCFTA could boost intra-African trade by 52 percent and add US $450 billion to Africa’s income by 2035, he said, urging national assemblies to fast-track ratification bills and align domestic statutes with the agreement’s protocols.
• Trans-Sahara Highway and Morocco’s Atlantic Initiative. Linking six countries from Algiers to Lagos, the nearly-completed corridor—and Morocco’s offer to open its Atlantic ports and rail network to land-locked Sahel states—will knit markets together, lower logistics costs, and unlock new value chains. PAP and regional parliaments such as ECOWAS and CEMAC, Charumbira insisted, must “exercise oversight so that these projects are fully implemented and not just brilliant ideas on paper.”

From Dialogue to Deliverables

The Rabat forum, convened under the theme “Inter-regional and Continental Dialogues Among Global South Countries as a Key Lever for Addressing New Challenges to International Cooperation and Achieving Peace, Security, Stability, and Shared Development,” aims to table an action plan on trade facilitation, technology governance and conflict mitigation for adoption by member legislatures. For Charumbira, success hinges on lawmakers “walking the talk”:

“Our focus must remain on the lives and livelihoods of our people. We owe it to them to ensure that every initiative that benefits them is actualized.”

With those words, the PAP President challenged his peers to return home not just with communiqués, but with bills, budget amendments and oversight schedules that turn today’s South-South dialogue into tomorrow’s shared prosperity.

The Rabat forum, which gathers legislators across Africa, the Arab world, Asia, and Latin America, was convened to craft “actionable recommendations and practical decisions” on economic integration, trade facilitation, and shared development. The PAP President’s intervention injected a sense of legislative urgency—placing elected representatives, rather than technocrats alone, at the heart of delivering peace, stability, and prosperity to more than half the planet’s population.

In Charumbira’s words, the time has come for southern parliaments to “start walking the talk because legislation lies within our purview.”