Over dependence on foreign aid to finance 60 per cent of African Union programmes is slowing progress in development of effective capacity to deliver Pan-African transformation.
Leaders gathering in Nairobi for the 5th Mid-Year Coordination Meeting of the African Union want reforms to allow the African Union (AU) pursue multiple urgent and critical interventions using internally mobilized resources.
“The Pan-African movement has always been about sovereignty and agency, first and foremost. Chronic dependence on well-meaning partners is starkly inconsistent with this aspiration,” President William Ruto noted.
“It is time to free up African Union from structural and organizational constraints including duplication and other inefficiencies to make it effective on a greater scale,” he said.
As a starting point, Ruto said defining the roles and functions of different organs and instruments is unavoidable. The coordination, administrative and implementation mandate of the commission, the legislative and oversight function of a strong Pan African Parliament, and the political leadership, ownership and broad policy direction of the Council, all need to be reflected more clearly through rational structural.
Ruto noted that African integration is unstoppable as it will open doors for unprecedented transformation.
The most compelling signal that African integration is unstoppable, and that it will open doors for unprecedented socioeconomic transformation, is the progress made in implementing the Africa Continental Free Trade Area.
Under the Africa Continental Free Trade Area, 54 countries have agreed to create a single market with a population of 4 billion and GDP of USD 3.4 trillion. The free trade area is projected to lift 30 million people out of extreme poverty and boost incomes by 7 per cent, or USD 450 billion by 2035.
“As I have had occasion to remark before elsewhere, this is the magnitude of what typical Pan-African collective action can achieve, and we are only getting started.”
Present at the meeting held in Nairobi were Presidents Azali Assoumani (Comoros), Ali Bongo (Gabon), Abdel Fattah (Egypt), Macky Sall (Senegal), Ismail Guelleh (Djibouti) and Bola Tinubu (Nigeria), African Union Commission Chairperson Moussa Faki, among others.
