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A treaty formally creating a new pan-African organisation, the African Union, comes into effect today .

It's the brainchild of the Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, who envisages it as a body loosely modeled on the European Union -- one which will increasingly integrate Africa economically, socially, and eventually, politically.

Over a twelve-month transition period the new body will replace the fifty-three-member Organisation for African Unity, which celebrated its thirty-eighth anniversary on Friday.

Sceptics say that given the conflicts ravaging the continent and the diversity of its peoples and cultures, pan-Africanism can never regain the appeal it won in its post-colonial heyday. The BBC Africa analyst says the pan-African ideal was born in the struggle to shake off imperial rule, but that, in the face of political realities, it was compromised by Africa's post-colonial leaders.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service