By Judith Ugwumadu | 12 August 2014
The African Union Commission is to receive a $25m World Bank grant to help it improve its internal operations, including strategic planning, management and budgeting.
The four-year grant, signed by World Bank president Jim Yong Kim and AUC chair Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, will also help the commission improve its regional development initiatives in agriculture, energy, infrastructure and governance.
In particular, the project will help the commission to implement its 2014-17 strategic plan and Agenda 2063, its road map for African development over the next 50 years.
Jim said: ‘Our partnership with AUC opens doors for collective action by bringing global solutions for the benefit of Africa to promote economic transformation and development.’
Dlamini-Zuma added: ‘This support is very important as it will help us enhance our corporate governance and management systems to improve the lives of African women, youths and citizens.
‘But more than that, I appreciate the World Bank’s willingness to support the AU as an organisation that represents 54 African member states.’
The grant was initially approved in May this year and is expected run through till the end of December in 2018.
Last week, US President Barack Obama announced during the first ever US-Africa Leaders Summit that $37bn would be invested in the African economy, with the bulk coming from the US government and businesses.
He said that good governance was a ‘foundation of economic and free societies’.
Obama also urged the 50 African leaders that attended the summit between August 4 and 6 to ‘step up our collective efforts against the corruption’, stressing that the money must to be invested in the people of Africa.
The African Union represents the interests of 54 member states across the entirety of the continent and is headquartered in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The commission aims to be an ‘efficient and value-adding institution driving the African integration and development process in close collaboration with African Union member states, the regional economic communities and African citizens’.
