This is a follow-up on last week’s article, titled “Agenda 2063: African Union’s 50-year transformative blueprint,” which is the African Union’s plan to transform Africa into a global powerhouse, a region of reckoning in the community of nations. This article is primarily meant to review the progress recorded so far in the implementation of the ambitious continental vision. The lessons to be learnt from this review will be useful for planning at the national level and beyond. To begin with, Africa’s economic and social development plans either at the national, sub-regional, or continental levels have always been hampered by a dearth of long-term development capital, a low level of technical knowhow, and poor project management skills, apart from poor financial management skills, exacerbated by entrenched poor governance often manifesting in burdensome corrupt practices.
“However, implementation has been hindered by political, economic, financial, technical and project management constraints.”
Be that as it may, significant credits must be given to the African Union and its implementation agencies for the enormous effort expended so far in the implementation of Agenda 2063. The vision, goals, objectives, and aspirations, among others, of Agenda 2063 were extensively elaborated upon in last week’s article. Some of the past and current initiatives that Agenda 2065 built upon include the “Lagos Plan of Action, the Abuja Treaty, the Minimum Integration Programme, the Programme for Infrastructural Development in Africa (PIDA), the Comprehensive Africa Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP), the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), Regional Plans and Programmes, and National Plans.” Each of these initiatives and programmes in themselves is an elaborate agenda requiring political will on a continental basis to see the light of day. When all these programmes are then brought together as a basis for an integrated continental development agenda, it is not difficult to understand why implementation could be difficult.
The first ten-year plan laid the foundation for the realisation of the ambitious targets of African Union vision by 2063. However, implementation has been hindered by political, economic, financial, technical and project management constraints. Findings on the efficiency of the First Ten Years Implementation Plan (FTYIP) revealed as follows: 1). costing financial resources required (determining resource gap) was rated “very weak,” 2). adequacy of financial resources mobilised for Agenda 2063 implementation was rated “very weak,” 3). distribution of financial resources among goals and priority areas, rated “very weak,” 4). level of “value for money” realised (anecdotal evidence), rated “weak” – implying cost overruns, poor financial management and misappropriation of funds. Overall rating on efficiency was “very weak,” and overall performance rating on Effectiveness was an unimpressive 58 percent.
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The summary on sustainability of the first ten years of project implementations reveals as follows: 1). resources deployed in support of Agenda 2063 implementation, rated as “inadequate.”2). governance structures at all levels for effective leadership of Agenda 63 implementation, rated “weak.” 3). public awareness, participation, domestication, and ownership, rated “low.” 4). institutionalising the agenda across all levels of implementation (including coordination structures at national and regional levels), rated “weak.” 5). Leveraging non-state actor efforts, including the private sector and the Diaspora, in Agenda 63, rated “weak.” Overall rating for sustainability was “weak.”
Key findings on flagship projects were as follows: 1). “Notable progress was registered in the implementation of some projects, such as the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) and the Single African Air Transport Market (SAATM). These projects have a greater impact on integration, are interconnected, and reinforce each other; therefore, their implementation should be prioritised concurrently. Limited progress was registered on some flagships, such as financial institutions (Annual Africa Economic Platform; 3). The factors that contributed to the low implementation of these projects include low levels of ratifications, low funding for capital-intensive projects, and inadequate skills and capacities; 4). All flagships are relevant, but implementation should be re-prioritised based, amongst others, on progress of implementation, potential for massive job creation, and ability to phase the implementation and thereby guide categorisation into short-medium-long term.”
Agenda 2063 is essentially based on an indicative planning model. Indicative planning is what developing nations transiting from a centralised, basically socialist economy to a mixed economy do, with a significant role for the private sector. The private sector is assigned key sectors of the economy to invest in as part of a medium-term national development plan and incentivised to undertake the necessary investment to realise targeted sectoral objectives. In the case of Agenda 2065, apart from the flagship projects, which are continental in nature, most of the goals are to be achieved by member states and regional economic communities (RECs) aligning their medium-term economic development plans to Agenda 2065 and using continental frameworks like the Comprehensive African Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP) and the Programme for Infrastructural Development in Africa (PIDA) to achieve sectoral objectives at the national level. Thus, it is not practicable for Agenda 2065 to assign capital budgets to most of its development plan targets since they are to be collectively achieved at the national and sub-regional levels. These are some of the reasons responsible for the practical difficulties experienced during the First Ten Year Implementation Plan of the continental long-term development plan.
Also, although Agenda 2065 is backed by an elaborate communication programme and a deluge of information on the Internet, they somehow have not translated into adequate awareness at the national level among critical stakeholders, including policymakers, legislators, sub-national governments, the private sector, the labour movement, and academia.
The First Ten Years Implementation Plan of the African Union Agenda 2065 has presented a huge learning experience to its implementation agencies, which will hopefully inform better performance by successive ten-year implementation plans (TYIPs). The robust feedback mechanism of the TYIPs should be adopted by Nigeria and other member countries of the African Union in the implementation of their national development plans.
Mr Igbinoba is Team Lead/CEO at ProServe Options Consulting, Lagos
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