It will be recalled that at its 12th Summit in Algiers in November 2004, the Heads of State and Government Implementation Committee (HSGIC) of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) expressed an urgent need for a timely, effective and efficient implementation of NEPAD’s priority projects. As a result, the Chairperson of the HSGIC, President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria, convened a workshop on March 7-8, 2005 to discuss mechanisms for speeding up the implementation of the priority projects. That workshop drew attention to the RECs as primary mechanisms for implementing the NEPAD agenda, thus once again clearly re-stating a primary role that had been assigned to the RECs in the promotion of a regional approach to growth and development.

The discharge of this responsibility is not however without significant challenges. The ability of the RECs to lead a regional approach to development and strengthen regional integration on the continent rests, critically, on their capacity to support the development, effective utilization and maintenance of regional infrastructure and other public goods; boost socio-economic

activities including intra-Africa and external trade; facilitate free movement of people and resources; and help to position the continent as a worthy development partner in the global arena.

In the attempt to provide a framework for an effective and systematic response to the capacity challenges facing the RECs, the March 2005 workshop requested ACBF, on behalf of NEPAD Secretariat and the African Union Commission, to conduct a survey of the capacity needs of eight African RECs and sub-RECs. That survey was completed in October 2005 and its recommendations constituted the subject-matter of the stakeholders’ workshop that ACBF organized in Addis Ababa on February 25, 2006. The survey report identified existant capacity gaps and provided some guides to the institutional and human capacity requirements of the RECs for the successful implementation of their primary mandates and NEPAD’s priority programs.

ACBF humbly undertook to conduct the survey because it understands and is deeply committed to the role and responsibilities of the RECs, as well as the importance of NEPAD as a vision and a framework for Africa’s development in a rapidly globalizing world. The last decade has seen major changes on the continent at the core of which is a much stronger appreciation by African leaders of the roles they have to play in addressing the continent’s challenges and exploiting its vast development opportunities. This appreciation, which is embodied in NEPAD, is a desired first step to a vibrant regional approach to a successful transformation of the continent. Progress in the transformation is nonetheless still tardy. The slow pace at which the continent is striving to transform itself is partly due to inadequate regional infrastructure, ineffective governance especially at the political level, and numerous other development challenges. These considerably undermine efforts at fostering productive and sustained regional integration, accelerating growth, and achieving poverty eradication. In its intervention on the continent’s capacity needs, ACBF recognizes the importance of these challenges and is already active in addressing some of them as evidenced by its support to CEMAC, COMESA, ECOWAS, among others. ACBF is also very active in its support to the African Union Commission as well as NEPAD Secretariat and programs.

The Foundation’s experience has shown that Africa’s continental and regional institutions need considerable improvements in human and institutional capacity for the delivery of their mandates. Besides the growing demand for interventions by these institutions, the need is also demonstrated by the fact that a number of regional and continental initiatives had in the past failed to deliver desired results largely because of insufficient priority given to capacity building and utilization. This explains why ACBF has been prompt to respond to the African leaders’ call for capacity building in support of the RECs as well as NEPAD and its programs. It is in this connection that a Memorandum of Understanding was signed between the ACBF and NEPAD Secretariat on 14th January 2004.

The MoU established collaboration and partnership between the ACBF and NEPAD Secretariat on issues relating to the building of capacity for the implementation of NEPAD’s programs. The 2004 MoU, which formalized relationship between ACBF and NEPAD, was preceded by a number of joint activities that ACBF had supported, especially in the area of market access for Africa’s exports. It is therefore the Foundation’s hope that the findings of the ongoing survey of the capacity needs of the RECs will provide a strong impetus for action and give rise to a major continent-wide capacity building action plan for the RECs. Now is the time to act, given that capacity building is a process, the outcomes of which involve a long gestation period.

Experience in the field has shown that capacity building is a long-term process. ACBF is duly aware that Africa’s capacity challenges, including those relating to the needs of the RECs, are enormous and daunting, yet we are optimistic that the continent can rise up to them. It is the belief of ACBF that Africa has at the moment a great opportunity to become a continent where poverty, deprivations and all forms of human indignity can be made a thing of the past. The continent’s future is bright, provided it can assume full responsibility, ownership and leadership of its capacity building and development management process.

A Working Session at the Stakeholders’ Workshop: (From left to right) – Amb. Vijay Makhan, AU Special Envoy to Mauritania; Prof. Firmino Mucavele, CEO, NEPAD Secretariat; Mr. Abdoulie Janneh, Executive Secretary, UNECA; Dr. Maxwell Mkwezalamba, Commissioner for Economic Affairs, African Union Commission; Dr. Soumana Sako, Executive Secretary, ACBF; Dr. Hakim Ben Hammouda, Director, Trade and Regional Integration Division (TRID), UNECA (standing); and H.E. Mr. Gurjit Singh, Indian Ambassador to Ethiopia

The potentials of the RECs to play an important operational role in the implementation of NEPAD’s priority programs need to be fully exploited, if they are to emerge truly as the building blocks of the African Union and lead a successful integration of the continent in spite of the glaring unevenness in their performance. All the partner institutions, which attended the February 25, 2006 stakeholders’ workshop in Addis Ababa, expressed very clear views about the utility of the ACBF-led survey and the need to take rationalization and the building of RECs’ take rationalization and the building of RECs’ capacity to a decisive level.

On this score, in addressing the stakeholders’ workshop, the Executive Secretary of UNECA, Mr. Abdoulei Janneh, passionately noted that the Abuja Treaty designated the RECs as the lead agents for achieving the dream of an African Economic Community, and that the HSGIC of NEPAD had also assigned the RECs priority tasks to carry out in the advancement of NEPAD agenda. But sadly, in spite of these important responsibilities that were supposed to be carried out by the RECs, they had not been provided with commensurate resources. He contended that this partly explained why progress towards the ultimate goal of an African Economic Community had been mixed. Drawing on findings from a UNECA flagship publication on regional integration – Assessing Regional Integration in Africa (ARIA I), Mr. Janneh revisited some of the generic constraints facing the RECs and stressed that foremost on the list of impediments were capacity constraints within their individual secretariats, which were seriously impeding the implementation of their work programs. He concluded with a sense of contentment and optimism by reiterating UNECA’s belief that the goal of creating the African Economic Community, as enshrined in the Abuja Treaty, was achievable if the RECs could be effectively supported to tackle the challenges confronting them. In this regard, he noted that the recommendations of the stakeholders’ workshop on the ACBF zero draft report on the capacity needs of the RECs would assist all in addressing the capacity challenges of the RECs.

The Executive Secretary of UNECA, Mr. Abdoulie Janneh (left), exchanging views with Dr. Maxwell Mkwezalamba (right), Commissioner for Economic Affairs at the African Union Commission, during the stakeholders’ workshop.

Represented by its Chief Executive Officer, Prof. Firmino G. Mucavele, NEPAD Secretariat commended the efforts of ACBF in launching the RECs capacity needs assessment survey, an exercise of which NEPAD Secretariat is a major stakeholder, and noted that the Stakeholders’ workshop provided a much-sought opportunity for discussing the capacity needs of the RECs. He emphasized that effective functioning of the RECs was desirably a necessary step for effective strengthening of institutions on the continent, and called on the ACBF for a speedy completion of the report, which would provide inputs for ongoing consultations on the rationalization and strengthening of the RECs.

In its opening remarks at the workshop, the African Union Commission, which chaired the opening session, noted with a strong sense of commitment that, as stipulated in the vision, mission and strategic plan of the African Union, the building of the capacity of the RECs, which themselves are the building blocks of the African Union, was one of the major priorities of the African Union Commission. It was in this regard that the Commission welcomed the ACBF zero draft report on the capacity needs of the RECs, as it would help to develop programs for strengthening the RECs, which remain important regional pillars of the African Union. The Chairperson of the Commission, (represented by Dr. Maxwell M. Mkwezalamba, Commissioner for Economic Affairs) stated that the zero draft report was produced at a critical moment: at a time that UNECA and the African Union Commission were working together on the rationalization and harmonization of the RECs and their activities. He indicated that the final report of the ongoing ACBF-led RECs survey would provide inputs for the AU Assembly of Heads of State and Government that would be held in Banjul, The Gambia in June 2006, which would focus on the rationalization and harmonization of the RECs. In this regard, the AU Commission therefore called on the Stakeholders’ workshop to take a critical look at the recommendations of the zero draft report prepared by the ACBF so as to put forward proposals that would pave the way towards building the capacities of the RECs.

The continent’s integration efforts, the AU Commission emphasized, needed to be supported by effective and efficient RECs, and to this end called on the ACBF to ensure speedy completion of the survey report for the finalization of the work on the rationalization of the RECs.
Besides the three major partner institutions that were directly involved in the exercise, other stakeholders including the African Development Bank and development partners, which comprised Canada, India and the United Kingdom that were present at the workshop endorsed the zero draft report, noting that it would take efforts a step further in the attempt to rationalize the RECs, strengthen a desired regional approach to Africa’s development, and facilitate effective coordination of support for the capacity needs of the RECs in the context of the principles of the March 2005 Paris Declaration on Aid Coordination.

Ahead of the African Union Assembly of Heads of State and Government that is coming up in June 2006 in Banjul, The Gambia, ACBF will produce a revised report of the survey that will be shared with all stakeholders in May 2006. In the production of the revised report, ACBF will work closely with NEPAD Secretariat that will host the next stakeholders’ meeting to discuss the Capacity Building Action Plan that the ACBF-led survey will generate.