No delays for self-financing of Agenda 2063 - AU Commissioner

Albert Muchanga, the Commissioner for Trade and Industry for the African Union (AU) Commission, has challenged African governments to urgently mobilise domestic finance to make AU’s Agenda 2063 a reality to prosper the continent and its people.

This, he said, had to be done urgently to ensure that the implementation of Agenda 2063, which is in its tenth year since it was adopted in 2013, risked not being achieved.

Mr Muchanga made this call during a high-level meeting of Governors of the African Development

Bank (AfDB) at the Bank’s 58th annual meetings in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, noting that the current finance for Agenda 2063 was small.

He said that should the current trend to financing continue, it would be difficult to make the master plan for transforming the world’s second-largest continent into a global economic powerhouse by delivering inclusive and sustainable development.

He noted that about 80 percent of AU’s budget was donor-funded, with little domestic financing, which puts the achievement of the sustainable growth and prosperity vision of the Union at risk, hence, the urgent need for more self-financing.

“In 2016, we made commitments to enhance the financing of the Union and one of the things we set out to do was the establishment of the Peace Fund, and the target was that there should be $400 million in it,” he said.

“Unfortunately, we’ve had disruptions like COVID and the Russia-Ukraine war, which have affected the

mobilisation of money into the Fund to support regional peace and security,” the Commissioner added.

This situation, he said led to the Union taking steps to mobilise internal private sector finance to support the implementation of Agenda 2063 through the Association of Stock Exchanges by establishing the pan-African Stock Exchange.

“In July last year, we started a study to understand the terrain and to start work to roll out the pan-African Stock Exchange. The focus is to position Africa to grow between seven and 10 percent,” Mr Muchanga said. 

To achieve self-financing, he called for a more aggressive and ambitious domestic finance mobilisation and deepened collaborations with all stakeholders to understand the key drivers for a sustainable transformation and prosperity of the continent.

“Africa has not developed the capacity to produce intermediate goods. So, let’s invest in the technical

and industrial skills to transform our materials into intermediary goods for sustainable growth,” the Commissioner encouraged African governments.

“Africa is not where it needs to be. We need you and we need each other, because we have a collective responsibility to build Africa and put it where it needs to be” Dr Akinwumi Ayodeji Adesina, President, AfDB said.

Governors at the meeting underscored the need to support the implementation of Agenda 2023 without any delay and pledged to ensure the mobilisation of the needed resources to its fruition.

Birthed in 2013 during the 50th-anniversary celebration of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU)/AU, the 50-year vision marks a rededication towards the attainment of an integrated, prosperous, and peaceful Africa.

Agenda 2063 is to be driven by the people of Africa, representing a dynamic force in the international arena through structural transformation, increased peace, and reduction in social conflicts.

It also marks a renewed energy towards the continent’s economic growth, social progress, the need for people-centred development, gender equality, and youth empowerment within a global contest of the ICT revolution.