UN Agencies Discuss Mobilizing Resources to Assist African Union and NEPAD Programme
NAIVASHA – Resource is a big constraint to fully operationalize the business plans of UN clusters in their support of the African Union and its NEPAD programme, the Chief of Partnership and Technical Cooperation Office (PATCO) at ECA, Mr. Anthony Nwanze told representatives of United Nations agencies and key departments of the African Union Commission meeting in the framework of the Regional Coordination Mechanism (RCM), Friday in Naivasha, Kenya.
In a presentation on resource mobilization, Mr. Anthony Nwanze said that while UN clusters had developed useful business plans to support the African Union, those plans could not be used mainly due to challenges with resource mobilization.
His analysis on this is fairly straight forward: “We need to review and prioritize activities in the ten year capacity building Programme of the African Union; cost the activities in the business plans; establish a fundraising committee and by the end of 2012, we should be able to identify the gaps”.
The participants unequivocally affirmed the need for collective resource mobilization to implement the activities laid out in their respective business plans and the need to work together towards attracting funding instead of waiting for it to come.
They also agreed that the Joint RCM-Africa Secretariat based at the ECA should develop a consolidated business plan to facilitate the identification of opportunities for inter-cluster collaborations as well as for joint resource mobilization.
Closing the two-day meeting, Mr. Emmanuel Nnadozie, Director of ECA’s Economic Development and NEPAD Division, underscored the importance of internal resource mobilization and the urgent need to reaffirm our commitment to make every effort to implement joint activities at the level of clusters and sub-clusters, as well as to support the RCM-Africa Secretariat to play its role more effectively.
He used the occasion to thank the United Nations Environment Programme, the RCM Secretariat and all participants for their contributions to the success of the two-day event, underscoring the significance of RCM-Africa that is serving as an appropriate platform to improve coherence, promote synergy and coordination among UN agencies and organizations and strengthen their collective response in addressing Africa’s priority needs at regional level and sub-regional levels.
Mr. Mounkaila Goumandakoye, United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Regional Director for Africa also made closing remarks in which he confirmed UNEP’s modest financial contributions in the coming year.
The meeting, held on 26-77 July 2012, was organized by UNEP and the RCM/Africa Secretariat following a recommendation of the 12th session of the RCM in 2011 for its clusters to meet regularly to promote coordination and coherence in UN support for the African Union and its NEPAD programme. The two-day meeting brought together over 30 representatives of UN system agencies and organizations and the African Union Commission (AUC).