In Brussels, Africa day celebrations on 25 may 2009 were held against the backdrop of the AU Border Programme Implementation Plan and Africa-EU Partnership.
The Africa Day programme was jointly prepared by the African Group and the AU Permanent Mission in Brussels and was all the more relevant as it was focused on the implementation prospect of the AU Border Programme (AUBP) and the Africa–EU Strategic Partnership, in particular the related 2008 – 2010 Plan of Action adopted by the 2nd EU – Africa Summit held in Lisbon in December 2007.
To kick start the event, a public conference – debate was organised on 23 May at ACP House (Africa, Caribbean and Pacific) on the “issue of African borders from the viewpoint of the African Union border programme” and was introduced by a presentation from Ambassador Mahamat Saleh Annadif, Permanent Representative of the AU. His exhaustive presentation backed by supportive documents gave the meeting an overall view of the AU Border Programme from its inception and dwelled on the ways and means set out by the AU to ensure its proper implementation and popularisation vis-à-vis member states and populations. He laid emphasis on the importance of the topic particularly as the issue of African borders is part and parcel of the AU strategy to enhance African unity through political and economic integration to foster sustainable peace on the continent.
To illustrate this approach, Ambassador Annadif called on the Representative of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in Brussels, Mr Yaya Sow, to share with the participants the experience of ECOWAS in this field.
Advocacy for an exhaustive implementation of the 2008-2010 AU-EU Plan of Action
The glamorous reception hosted on 25 May and also attended by the numerous participants at the conference afforded H.E Ms Mamoruti Tiheli, Ambassador of Lesotho and Chairperson of the African Group of Ambassadors in Brussels, an opportunity to make a vibrant appeal for an exhaustive implementation of the Africa-EU Strategic Partnership and, in particular its corollary, the AU-EU 2008-2010 Plan of Action. To that effect, she called on the key actors of the instruments concerned to ensure that when the time comes to make an assessment, the African and European populations in whose name such instruments were adopted would only express great satisfaction. The Chairperson of the African Group of Ambassadors was thus echoing the concerns expressed a few weeks earlier on the availability of means to finance the Plan of Action, on the occasion of the 12th Africa-EU ministerial Troïka meeting. Her referring to the workshop which the meeting is planning to organise on the issue in a near future aroused optimism from the guests at the reception.
Indeed, more than five hundred guests from the Diplomatic Corps in Brussels, the European institutions, the civil society association movements, the private sector and African Diaspora from Belgium and the neighbouring countries had been invited to celebrate and partake with members of the African Group and Ambassadors of the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States (ACP).
There could not be a more appropriate opportunity for the current Chairman of the AU, the Ambassador of Libya in Brussels, H. E. Mr Hadeiba Ahmed EL Hadj, to reiterate the ultimate objective of African leaders when they created the AU, i.e, the advent of the United States of Africa. It is indeed against this background that the last scene of the evening was set with the cultural entertainment following a presentation on stage called “Africa-Ensemble Uni Show” performed by a melting pot of cultural companies from Burundi, Rwanda, Cameroon and the Maghreb which had individually performed earlier.
On the margins of the ceremony, an African Diaspora association called African Economic Group Organisation (AEGO) and a Belgian NGO called AQUADEV signed a protocol agreement to fund development projects in the Sahel countries, namely Burkina Faso, Mali, Senegal and Libya, with a view to promoting co-development.
