2017 — Morocco Rejoins the African Union

On January 30, 2017, Morocco was readmitted to the African Union as its 55th member, ending 33 years of diplomatic exile. King Mohammed VI's months of lobbying carried the vote 39 to 9, bringing the kingdom back into the continental family it had walked out of a generation earlier.

Morocco had quit the Organization of African Unity in 1984, the only African nation ever to leave, after the body admitted the Sahrawi republic that Morocco claims as its own. That dispute had not vanished by 2017. Yet the kingdom chose return over isolation, and the Union chose reunion, closing one of African diplomacy's longest estrangements.