The African Union Development Agency-NEPAD (AUDA-NEPAD) is an agency established by the African Union to oversee the operation of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), an initiative established by the AU in 2001.
Initially, the NEPAD Secretariat was the agency in charge of NEPAD until 2010, when the NEPAD Planning and Coordination Agency was established. Then in 2018, it was transformed into the African Union Development Agency-NEPAD (AUDA-NEPAD). Presently, AUDA-NEPAD is headed by Ms. Nardos Bekele-Thomas, who was appointed by the African Union as the organisation’s Chief Executive Officer in February 2022.
The mandates of AUDA-NEPAD are as follows:
- To coordinate and implement regional and continental projects that contribute to the realisation of the AU Agenda 2063.
- To act as the continental liaison on policy development and implementation.
- To strengthen the capacity of AU Member States through the provision of technical assistance and advisory services.
- To mobilise resources to fund development initiatives.
Infrastructure development is one of several priorities of the AUDA-NEPAD. Others include health, agriculture, and economic integration. To achieve infrastructure development, AUDA-NEPAD works directly with African countries in an advisory capacity, to help with the development of national policies that align with the AU Agenda 2063. AUDA-NEPAD also works with financial institutions such as the African Development Bank (AfDB) and the World Bank, in order to mobilise the funding needed for development projects.
Since its establishment in 2018, AUDA-NEPAD has been active in all 55 Member States of the African Union and it has spearheaded multiple projects including: Programme for Infrastructure Development in Africa (PIDA), Presidential Infrastructure Champion Initiative (PICI), Move Africa, Continental Master Plan.
To get a deeper understanding of the AUDA-NEPAD’s initiatives, PIDA is a long-term vision for infrastructure development in Africa that is characterised by its multilateral approach to infrastructure development. To promote regional cohesion in infrastructure projects, PIDA brings together all the African countries that will potentially be affected by the selected projects to decide on a unified strategy to implement the projects.
Also, PICI is an initiative to accelerate infrastructure development in Africa. The purpose of PICI is to actively involve Heads of State in regional infrastructure development across key sectors such as transport, energy, ICT, and transboundary water. Under PICI, African Heads of State are directly responsible for specific infrastructure projects and it is expected that the utilisation of their political capital would eliminate certain bottlenecks like bureaucratic delays that otherwise frustrate the execution of infrastructure projects and delay results.
Again, Move Africa is an initiative which is centred around promoting labour mobility and free movement within Africa. It relies on collaboration with private actors to achieve its goals. For example, the MoveAfrica Communications project tasked with the objective of shifting public perceptions around harmful stereotypes associated with migration is collaborating with non-governmental organisations such as Baraza Media Lab, Youth Hub Africa, African Women in Media (AWiM) and others, in the achievement of its objectives.
Furthermore, the African Continental Master Plan is the framework for establishing the Africa Single Electricity Market (AfSEM) which is intended to serve 1.3 billion people across 55 African countries. It aims to do this through the interconnection of the energy infrastructure of different African countries.
Overall, AUDA-NEPAD is remarkable for its cooperation with a broad range of actors involved in continental efforts for development including African countries, Heads of State, international organisations, regional organisations, and private actors. The results of this cross-sector cooperation are quite commendable as by 2024, AUDA-NEPAD had successfully mobilised $82 billion to finance PIDA. AUDA-NEPAD’s partnership with the European Union (EU) also led to a €15 million investment by the EU Commission to support the African Continental Master Plan.
Despite its achievements, the AUDA-NEPAD is not without some of the weaknesses which plague similar regional and international organisations such as funding and resource constraints and delays in project implementation. In addition, there have been reports of mismanagement and corruption at management levels of AUDA-NEPAD in country offices such as the protests against the CEO of the Nigerian office in August 2024; thus damaging the integrity of the organisation with potentially graver consequences for donor confidence and securing funding.
The work of AUDA-NEPAD as the AU’s specialised development agency is crucial for the actualisation of the Agenda 2063, which aims at holistic sustainable development of the African continent. Therefore, it is essential that AUDA-NEPAD intensify its efforts to secure financial partnerships and political collaborations to resolve the funding and bureaucratic delays that frustrate the success of its projects.