African Union Declarations

DECLARATION ON SELF-RELIANCE

Decision No: Assembly/AU/Decl.5(XXV)

We, Heads of State and Government, meeting at our 25^th Ordinary Session of the Assembly of the African Union in Johannesburg, South Africa, on 14-15 January 2015, adopt the First Ten-Year Implementation Plan of Agenda 2063 and its Financing Mechanism, as a step towards our collective vision for the level and depth of integration and development that our continent must achieve in the next 50 years;

1. In doing so, we also recognise that in order to achieve the goals set out in Agenda 2063, Member States of need to take practical and concrete measures to achieve the self-reliance we set as our goal 35 years ago in the Lagos Plan of Action adopted in 1980;

2. We reaffirm that self-reliance is not self-isolation, but a commitment to base the development of our continent primarily on own resources, and to mobilise resources within our continent for development;

3. At this Summit, we have adopted the following package of measures for self-reliance:

a) The decision on alternate sources of funding, The revised assessed contribution and Scale of Assessments that will become effective from January 2016 whose objective is to ensure that in the medium term Member States of the Union fund 100 percent of the operating budget, 75 percent of the programme budget, and 25 percent of the peace and security operations;

b) In addition, through the African Union Foundation that we have established for resource mobilisation on the continent, we work with the African people, including our private sector, to explore other innovative sources for funding our Union. In particular, and for the first time at our Summits, the African private sector made significant pledges that will augment the budgetary resources of our Union.

4. We recognise that the long term solution to increasing the capacity of our Member States for self-reliance and taking full charge of the budgetary requirements of our Union, is in strengthening the capability of our economies both at country level and continent wide. In this regard, we reiterate our commitment to the implementation of the fast track programmes and initiatives of Agenda 2063;

5. Africa must also be self-reliant in finding African solutions to African problems in the peace and security domain both in terms of funding and enhancing our collective capability to respond to conflict situations. The African Capacity for Immediate Response to Crises (ACIRC) is the interim mechanism that we have created for this purpose while we are operationalizing our African Standby Force;

6. We believe that this package of self-reliance measures will not only place our continent on the path towards a vision contained in Agenda 2063. It will also reverse the dependency that hampers the development of the full potential of our continent.