1. Africa Day is the annual commemoration of the May 25, 1963 founding of the Organization of African Unity. Leaders of 30 of the 32 independent African states signed a founding charter in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
In 1991, the OAU established the African Economic Community, and in 2002 the OAU established its own successor, the African Union.
2. Since 1963, 21 more states have joined, notably South Africa in 1994 following the end of white minority rule.
3. Ironically South Africa is a founding member of the African Union, which evolved out of the OAU.
4. The OAU became the African Union because of the increasingly economic, rather than political, nature of the challenges faced by the continent in the 1990s.
5. The African Union was officially launched in Durban, South Africa, in 2002, and 10 years later former Foreign minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma became the first woman chair of the AU Commission (the AU's administrative arm).
6.
Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe is the current chairman of the African Union.
7. The organisation remains headquartered in Addis Ababa, although it's legislative arm, the Pan African Parliament, is in Midrand, South Africa.
8. While Africa Day is a national holiday in a handful of African countries, it is widely commemorated by African states.
9. The theme for Africa Day 2015 is 'We are Africa'
