Africa is moving on the right track towards realizing Agenda 2063, African Union’s framework for transformative growth, AU Commissioner for Economic Affairs Dr. Anthony Mothae Maruping said.
During a press conference he gave Saturday, the commissioner noted that progress is being made in different areas.
Economic growth, infrastructure development and free movement of people are among the areas that the continent shows progress.
Economic transformation in the continent involves strengthened productive capacity, increased productivity, stronger competitiveness, diversification in all sectors and value addition as well as regional integration, he said.
Progress is being made also in development of road and rail network infrastructure, including renewable energy generation like solar, wind and geothermal among others.
“You see hydropower as a robust investment coming up, so electricity in rural areas and other places, and access to finance and other things are improving”, he said adding “all this conditions are very good and give us optimism.”
According to the commissioner, roadmap for silencing the guns by 2020 adopted in March 2017 and there is a steady improvement with regard to free movement of people.
He further noted that joint domestication, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of Agenda 2063 should become a reality through joint and coordinated efforts of key players.
Member states are encouraged to provide training, capacity building and experience sharing on Agenda 2063 among national stakeholders. “Africa’s development partners all accepted to cooperate within the context of agenda 2063”.
To date 36 AU member states have received domestication missions from the AU and technical partners.
Regarding the youth, the commissioner said over 40 percent of Africa’s population is under the age of 15, and a further 20 percent are between the ages of 15 and 24.
It is expected that the number of African youth between the ages of 15 and 24 will double by 2045 to over 400 million which make Africa a young continent.
It is important to benefit the youth from every economic activity to make the development sustainable, he added.
He urged the need to exert maximum effort to create conducive atmosphere so as to mobilize and engage the youth towards realization of Agenda 2063, the continent’s blueprint for attaining accelerated, stable and inclusive growth.(ENA).