The African Union is a 55-member body that looks to address issues common to all African nations.

Member states founded the African Union (AU) on May 26, 2001, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and its operations began the following year, on July 9, 2002, in Durban, South Africa. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was the first head of the African Union.

The Ethiopian capital is the political center of the AU. Most of the body's important decisions are made as a result of a semi-annual meeting of the heads of state called the Assembly of the African Union, which meets once a year. A head of state from of the member states serves as the Chairperson of the AU for a year. The chairperson represents the AU at international meetings, including the G-8 and the G-20. The post rotates among the continent's five geographic regions: Central, Eastern, Northern, Southern, and Western. The members of each geographic region are these:

Central Burundi Cameroon Central African Republic Chad Congo Democratic Republic of Congo Equatorial Guinea Gabon São Tomé and Príncipe

Eastern Comoros Djibouti Ethiopia Eritrea Kenya Madagascar Mauritius Rwanda Seychelles Somalia South Sudan Sudan Uganda United Republic of Tanzania

Northern Algeria Egypt Libya Mauritania Sahrawi Republic Tunisia

Southern Angola Botswana Lesotho Malawi Mozambique Namibia South Africa Swaziland Zambia Zimbabwe

Western Benin Burkina Faso Cape Verde Côte d'Ivoire Gambia Ghana Guinea Bissau Guinea Liberiai Mali Niger Nigeria Senegal Sierra Leone Togo

The AU also has these other official bodies:

• the African Union Commission, the secretariat to the political bodies
• the Executive Council, comprising foreign ministers from the member states
• the Pan-African Parliament, made up of 265 representatives of the various member states, elected by each state's national legislature
• the Permanent Representatives Committee, comprising ambassadors from the various member state
• the Peace and Security Council: The AU has a collective peacekeeping force, which has been deployed at various times to Burundi, Somalia, and Sudan.

The AU had its origins in previous pan-African organizations, including the First Congress of Independence African States, in 1958; the Organization of African Unity, founded in 1963; and the African Economic Community, founded in 1981.