Representatives drawn from more than thirty countries debated various instruments for attaining good coordination in Africa and proceeded to nominate regional representatives who will serve on Africa’s governing council, a new organ that replaces the old facilitation team. Some of the recommendations made directly touched on what should be done in order for this structure to effectively work with a secretariat that they identified as severely limited in its human-power base at the moment.
Reviewing a proposed three-year strategic plan that is meant to guide activities of the Secretariat up to 2010, the participants strongly felt that issues of coordination, impact of campaign at the national level, deepening African ownership and effective mobilization must be given serious attention. In an effort to carving out niche areas for the African secretariat, national coalition partners kept on emphasizing that a number of their campaigns targeted national governments and expected a revamped African secretariat to project the African voice in the relevant platforms.
The meeting that was held against the background of the December UN Millennium Campaign strategic retreat in Mombasa, Kenya and the January West Africa national coalitions consultations that were held in Burkina Faso, did not find it difficult to endorse plans of actions from many menus that were on the table.
Some of the important moments Africa put on the table were Africa Union Summit in Egypt, Africa day, day of the African child and Stand Up campaign. On international opportunities presented by UNCTAD and the Aid Effectiveness meetings to be held in Ghana, it was emphasized that the GCAP interventions should consolidate initiatives and positions that were captured in the issues papers presented at meeting.
Working groups were set up to follow up work in these areas and for the UNCTAD process, all were urged to rally behind organizations that had already registered through the Accra-based TWN Africa mobilizing African CSOs to participate in the forum.
One working group will also focus on the high level forum scheduled for September 2008 that will take place in New York where heads of state will once again review progress on implementing pro-poor policies and programmes aligned to MDGS and the agreed targets arising from the commitments they made in the Millennium declaration.
During the presentations on the regional activities covering East Africa, Southern Africa, West And Central Africa, it was not easy to identify specific policy demands that coalitions were seeking positive shifts from governments and international institutions. The predominant line was that all were seeking ways of making sure that Governments meet and exceed MDGS before 2015.
The meeting successfully portrayed activities that otherwise had gone unnoticed in the formal reporting and this was particularly the case for countries like DRC, Cameroon, Rwanda and the Gambia.