African Union Day: Commission Chairperson calls for mobilization of all resources to achieve objectives
Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso (PANA) - The Chairman of the African Union Commission, Moussa FAKI Mahamat, has called on Africans to mobilize all necessary resources to achieve the objective of the Union.
Speaking on the occasion of the African Union Day celebrated this Friday, the chairman said that from the Organization of African Unity (OAU) to the African Union (AU), rupture and continuity joined hands in a relationship of efficient collaboration built to match the new ambitions of the continent.
"Break in the shift of the center of gravity of our wills on strategic objectives related to our determination to accelerate the process of regional integration, this orientation was declined through the design and implementation of flagship projects covering all areas of human activity," he said.
These cover infrastructure, air transport, digitalization, industrialization, energy, education and scientific research, university training, agriculture, health, trade, communication, and culture.
For the African Union, the inclusion of women and youth in the development process and more broadly in the management of public affairs is more than a wish, it is a requirement, he said.
Mahamat said that all these sectors had been covered by the development of continental strategies structured in a coherent and dynamic whole labeled Agenda 2063.
In terms of results, the president of the Commission mentioned the advanced operationalization of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), the transformation of NEPAD into an African Development Agency, and the effective functioning of the Pan-African University.
Other achievements include the integration of the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) into AU structures, the granting of specialized AU agency status to the African Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF).
Others are the creation of CDC Africa and its involvement in the fight against pandemics, notably that of COVID-19, the African Drug Agency, the African Humanitarian Agency, and the progress in integration efforts at the level of the Regional Economic Communities,
Mahamat recalled that the fight against terrorism, on the one hand, and against the adverse effects of climate change, on the other hand, had been elevated to the rank of priorities as their impact on other development sectors of the continent was so harmful.
On the scale of the continent's shortcomings, he stressed that the continent's isolation remained due, at least in part, to low mobility of people, goods, and services between the Union's Member States, low agricultural production capacity, and energy insecurity.
It is in the wake of this observation that the second decade of implementation of Agenda 2063, which starts in 2023, will unfold, as he promised.
"It will focus on three central objectives: to ensure greater physical connectivity of the continent through the construction of roads and other communication infrastructure, to put in place the conditions for sufficient domestic agricultural production to reduce food imports, and to build technical capacity to achieve the energy transition," said the Chairman of the African Union Commission.
He called on the entire continent to mobilize all resources, intellectual, financial, and material to achieve this triple objective is a collective challenge that requires all and everyone's creativity, inventiveness, and especially boldness.
"It is in this regard that I would like to invite all Africans, both on the continent and in the Diaspora, to join the collective effort to build the "Africa we want" through a permanent will to surpass oneself, which is the guarantee of excellence, regardless of the field of activity in which one works, with the firm belief that it is the sum of small rivers that make great rivers," he concluded.
-0- PANA TNDD/JSG/MTA/RA 9Sept2022
