ECOSOCC launches its Pan-African Month of activities to commemorate AU@20
July 14, 2022
By THANDISIZWE MGUDLWA
William Carew, Head of ECOSOCC Secretariat said, “The importance of having a healthy Pan-Africanism discourse especially led by Africans, cannot be overemphasized. July 2022 marks 20 years since the Durban Summit. It is at this summit where the African Union was formed. 2022 is also nearly 60 years since the OAU was founded. Further, July 2004 is when ECOSOCC was established to give full meaning to the people centric vision of the AU in ensuring that the African citizens are at the centre of their development. July just seems to be the right moment to reflect and take note of the progress made by people on the continent, having seen the great groundwork that was laid down by the continent’s founding fathers.”
“The official launch of this Pan-African Month is a moment to reflect and assess the progress our continent has made in achieving the goals outlined in the AU Constitutive Act, as well as a moment to seek workable solutions to the challenges the continent faces. It is also our hope that the African civil society will not shy away from taking an active role in the list of activities that have been planned for this PAM.”
So said William Carew, Head of ECOSOCC Secretariat, in his welcome remarks at the launch of the month-long PAM activities on Friday.
Carew also said the commemoration was the right moment to ascertain the progress made by African people from the days of the founding of the OAU, emphasizing ECOSOCC’s key mandate of promoting dialogue between all segments of the African society on issues concerning the continent and its future.
The Mid-Year Coordination Meeting (MYCM), which replaces the AU’s mid-year summits, is seeking to create alignment and coordination between the work of the Union and its 8 recognized RECs, dubbed as the AU’s building blocks of African integration.
Importantly, the month of July 2022 or Pan African Month (PAM) marks 20 years since the Durban Summit which established the AU; and close to 60 years since the Organisation of African Unity ((OAU) was founded 1963.
In this regard, ECOSOCC is hosting a series of activities throughout the month of July 2022 in recognition of the contributions of African Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) to the continent’s integration agenda.
Amb Amr Aljowaily, strategic adviser to the deputy chairperson of the AU Commission, formally launched ECOSOCC’s PAM activities on Friday, last week, said Africa was now at a decisive moment to move towards the realization of the AU’s Agenda 2063 emphasizing the need for collaborative efforts between private sector, government, and civil society to actualize ‘The Africa We Want’ since none of the sectors could independently undertake the ambitious mission of transforming the continent.
Amb Aljowaily has called for “a genuine partnership which capitalizes on the respective roles of all social and institutional actors, one which is based on complementarity and not competition, on joining hands together and not pulling the ropes apart.
Each actor, Amb Aljowaily added, has a role to play, a contribution to make and a constituency to respond to. At the AU, we recognized those concentric cycles long ago and we designed the structures that could help achieve this potential.”
Amb Aljowaily further described ECOSOCC as an “exceptional and unique” platform that could help to realize this potential, noting that the rich diversity of CSOs in the calendar of activities for the Council’s PAM “provides the opportunity of harnessing the knowledge Africa needs, especially in the age where knowledge is one of the most valued resources. We look forward to learning the outcome of your rich discussions containing practical ideas founded on solid research and vetted through participatory discussions.”
“It is said that one hand cannot clap but it requires two to tango…. we are at a moment when we have the potential to transform the Continent we so dearly inherited to the Africa we so genuinely want. It is at such moments of history that reflection is requested, and action is expected. The ECOSOCC Civil-Society Pan-African Month is an opportunity to respond to this call and to meet that anticipation,” he said.
Among other activities lined up for the PAM commemoration, ECOSOCC would (July 12) feature a Forum on the nexus between inequality, food and nutrition security, in collaboration with Oxfam, among other partners.
The Forum is to take stock of what African governments are doing to fight inequality, raise awareness about the levels of inequality and come up with “realistic and timebound” actions necessary to combat the continent’s inequality.
Mukupa Nsenduluka, a policy officer at TJNA who spoke at the launch of the ECOSOCC PAM activities said the Forum was inspired by the 2022 AU Theme on Food Security and Nutrition, noting that the dialogue would seek to address Agenda 2063’s goals 3 and 20, the successful realization of which requires adequate financing and domestic resource mobilization mechanisms necessary to finance nutrition and food security.
“Having realized that Agenda 2063’s aspirations and goals cannot be achieved without adequate financing, we have identified the extractive sector, which includes mining as well as the oil and gas sector in Africa, as the key sectors that can finance these [food and nutrition security] aspects of Agenda 2063 through optimal tax revenue collection and value addition,” said Nsenduluka.
And speaking at the PAM launch, Peter Kamalingin, Oxfam Pan African program director, stated Oxfam’s renewed commitment to the ideals of Pan Africanism as contained in its recent global strategic framework which seeks to end the prevailing global economic system it describes as “ exclusive, extractive, colonial and racist” pointing out the need to always have the right analysis of challenges facing the continent so as to shape the right narrative and propose right solutions to the continent’s endemic problems.
“We need to decolonize the way we describe problems and the way we propose solutions as we cannot import development and this is why one of our most critical areas of interest is to increase research knowledge. Most importantly, we need to invest in people and build their agencies which will allow them to organize and this is why the civil society is important, because they are the means through which citizens can relate constructively with their governments,” Kamalingin noted.
Another activity being organized as part of the ECOSOCC PAM celebrations is a dialogue forum on ‘Leveraging Africa’s extractive sector for nutrition and food security financing’ to be hosted on July 13, in collaboration with the Tax Justice Network Africa (TJNA), among others.
This 1-day Forum is to focus on the role of the extractive sector in tackling Africa’s domestic resource mobilization challenges.
Another activity lined up for ECOSOCC’s commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the AU is a 3-day Citizens’ Forum on Democracy and Unconstitutional Changes of Government in Africa (July 11 -13), in collaboration with the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM).
Other ECOSOCC activities put together for July are a 1-day Highlevel Dialogue on Gender Inequality and Food Systems in Africa (July 13), as well as an E-symposium on the 2022 AU Theme of the Year (July 29), among other activities.
ECOSOCC Pan-African month was organized in collaboration with various partners, some of whom gave brief remarks on their Pan-African Month events as well as the importance of reigniting the spirit of Pan-Africanism. Mukupa Nsenduluka, Policy Officer at Tax Justice Network Africa; Peter Kamalingin, Oxfam Pan Africa Programme Director; Maunda Hermis Zambia Representative of Joining Forces Alliance; and Yavi Madurai, Executive Director of Pan African Business Women’s Association (PABWA) gave remarks at the launch.
