The strategic plan 2009-2012, elaborated by the A frican Union Commission (AUC), will not after all be among the items on the agen d a of the session of the Executive Council that began Thursday in Addis Ababa, Et h iopia, official sources said.
In fact, the Committee of Permanent Representatives (COREP), which examined the plan during its works (26-27 January) considered “that it cannot be submitted, f o r the time being, to the Executive Council, nor to the Conference of Heads of st a te and government.”
COREP has decided to send the file back to the AU Commission and to defer its ex amination by the foreign affairs ministers and heads of state and government.
The file should be examined at the next conference of heads of state and governm ent scheduled for July.
In its report intended for the Executive Council, COREP highlighted that the “do cument can be considered as a current work instrument, a good start for the elab o ration of the strategic plan.”
Consequently, COREP mandated the commission to carry out the revision of the doc ument, taking into account, the preoccupations raised by several delegations.
It is because of the criticisms formulated by the ambassadors who did not apprec iate the plan as a whole that COREP finally decided to withhold the file.
In fact, some ambassadors, according to COREP’s report, found that the report do es not contain specific realisable objectives, or execution deadlines.
It does not either comprise, according to others, a detailed evaluation of the f ormer strategic plan, particularly its advantages and weaknesses, which would ha v e allowed to avoid gaps in the new strategic plan, because it does not have eith e r a link with the former plan, or a historical conceptualisation.
Other criticisms have been formulated, notably the lack of coordination and cohe rence within the Commission in the elaboration of the document, which resulted i n inadequate consultations with member states and stakeholders and a lack of appr o priation of the document by Africa.
The report also highlighted that the vision contained in this plan is too loaded and does not stress sufficiently the role of Information and Communication Tech n ologies (ICT) as “a vital instrument in the area of media and communication.”
The strategic plan is also criticised for not having picked out the role of youn g people, or the inclusion of the equality between men and women in the activiti e s of the Commission, “two crucial issues for development in Africa.”
Last criticism formulated by the ambassadors, this plan does not include any sta tistics on the calculations of budget provisions for the execution of the projec t of the strategic plan that did not take into account the low absorption capacit y of the former strategic plan by the Commission.
Yet, during the opening ceremony of the session of the Executive Council Thursda y, the president of the AU Commission who was expecting the examination of this p lan by the Executive Council presented it as the new framework of the activities
of the Commission for the four years ahead, adding that it contributes in accele r ating the continental integration process.
He will have to work again on the file to submit once again to COREP that is hab ilitated to appreciate the documents before submitting them to the Executive Cou n cil.
