NAIROBI -- Like parents awaiting the birth of a child, African leaders are placing big hopes in a new continent-wide institution they present to the world next week.

The omens are distinctly mixed ahead of the arrival of the African Union (AU), a body meant to help save the world's poorest continent from the curse of war and underdevelopment.

Lack of serious money, bureaucratic infighting and above all a host of wars from Sudan to Liberia to the Democratic Republic of Congo are casting long shadows over the union's future.

But Africans say that in a world where regional blocs stand taller than single nations, they have no choice but to proceed.

"I'm saying 'go for it, African Union' because what other alternative do we have?," said Wanjiru Kihoro of Abantu, a group that helps African women fight poverty.

"If we don't have the union, we will lose everything, because how can we face the other power blocs - the EU, ASEAN and others?" Amara Essy, an Ivory Coast diplomat and the main architect of the new union, told ******New African******* magazine.

Essy is secretary general of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), the troubled Ethiopian-based body that will turn into the AU at a conference in South Africa next week.

Born 40 years ago in the heady days of decolonization, the OAU nursed African pride but failed to grow sturdy and strong.

In middle age, and despite some successes, it is now little more than a talking shop beset by financial and administrative woes.

**********Prosperity and Democracy "The OAU is the most difficult organization I have ever seen," ******New African****** quoted Essy as saying. Describing the secretariat, he said: "Nobody wants to help anybody. Nobody likes anybody. That's the truth." Now, as the AU prepares to step onto the world stage, its founders face the task of celebrating its arrival while cautioning against unrealistic expectations.

"These kinds of bodies take many, many years to form and be effective," said Stephen Morrison, head of Africa Studies at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

"Whatever happens with the union is going to happen slowly and incrementally. For that reason I wouldn't rush to judgment." The AU aims to replicate the European Union in cementing prosperity and democracy through social, economic and regional integration. Unlike the OAU it will have the right to intervene in member states in cases of genocide and war crimes and so, in theory, be better placed to tackle poverty and human rights.

In practice, the AU may be as cash-strapped as the OAU.

The OAU urged members in March to pay $55 million in membership and other arrears to help fund its transformation into the union. The sum is almost twice the OAU's $26.8 million annual budget. How many complied with the call is not yet known.

**********Lack of Cash Lack of cash could determine whether the AU will grow from being a group of individual governments into a body with the kind of supra-national enforcement powers that the EU enjoys.

"Europe is an integrated economy, so enforcement is a valid concept. But African economies are far from integrated," said Klaus van Walraven, a political scientist in the African Department at Leiden University in the Netherlands.

"The union is likely to be a rather weak organization that depends on persuasion not enforcement ... My hunch is that in 10 years time we can look back and see not very much has changed." Some analysts say the way the union was devised by largely authoritarian and paternalistic African leaders bodies ill.

"There has been no accountability," said Arthur Muliro of the Society for International Development, a network of development consultants. "If ever there has been an institution irrelevant to the lives of ordinary Africans, it is the OAU." Muliro says plans for the union were drawn up by a cabal of African presidents who mostly did not bother to obtain the opinions of their own parliaments or citizens about the venture.

It remains to be seen whether Libya, which has bankrolled much of the union's development, will use its influence with other countries including fellow Sahelian states to push the organization in an anti-Western direction.

But diplomats fear the AU, despite its new emphasis on human rights, will inherit the OAU's fondness for consensus and adherence to state sovereignty -- factors that have limited the OAU's ability to take members to task for wrongdoing.

"New bodies like the union simply have to have strong leadership and clear priorities to survive -- and they have to demonstrate returns very early on to members," said Morrison.

The reluctance of African presidents to criticize each other could hamper the AU economic rescue plan -- the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) -- because it requires leaders to do exactly that in order to win foreign investment.

NEPAD stipulates peer review by African governments of each others' performance on human rights and government.

******** Border War********** That reluctance was thrown into relief in March when the OAU pronounced Zimbabwe's widely-criticzed election legitimate.

"For the OAU, it was not a stellar moment," said Morrison.

There have been successes, notably the OAU's main diplomatic achievement in recent years -- its help in ending a two-year border war between Ethiopia and Eritrea.

The AU can achieve much in Durban simply by a successful launch, diplomats say. A strong statement on human rights and clean government can help set priorities in a continent being torn apart by wars, poverty, lawlessness and AIDS.