Roundup: Women empowerment, Ebola, security top AU summit agenda

The African Union (AU) Commission said African leaders are expected to dwell upon challenges such as women empowerment, Ebola outbreak and security faced by the continent at the upcoming AU summit in Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa.

Erastus Mwencha, Deputy Chairperson of the AU Commission, told the media on Wednesday the year of 2014 was busy for Africa with challenges including among others, the Ebola outbreak, huge drop in commodity prices, and extremism by the Boko Haram group.

While launching the Agenda 2063, the summit will be dwelling upon issues related to the Ebola epidemic and Boko Haram among others, which Mwencha said are challenges to the African continent.

Agenda 2063, a framework developed to give a roadmap on how to transform Africa's economies in the next 50 years, will be accompanied with 10-year programs, according to Mwencha.

He said that the Agenda 2063 is an input to the post-2015 global development agenda.

"2015 is a year when the MDGs (millennium development goals) come to the end, and the beginning of the post-2015 development agenda. So, our Agenda 2063 is also an input to the global post- 2015 development agenda," he said.

In collaborated efforts of Africans with the support of the international community, positive results have been achieved in the fight against Ebola, he revealed.

Due to decline on oil price, Mwencha said there was a mixed picture in terms of economic performance of the continent as a whole.

"Our economies depend on exporting primary products. Since the third quarter of last year, we saw a significant reduction in prices of oil, which was good news to many African countries those who import but also bad news for those that who are exporting. So, we see mixed picture in terms of economic performance of the continent as a whole," he said.

According to Mwencha, a great progress has been made on the continent in peace and security area, whereby concerted efforts were made to try and reduce conflicts in hot spots with commitment of African leaders.

He said that African forces decapitated Al-Shaabab quite significantly.

"But, it was also a year of challenges because we have seen the onset of a new phenomenon that is radicalism and extremism in the name of Boko Haram, which is also threatening to spread in a western part of the continent, for which will also be subject in our discussion at the summit," he said.

With the push to implement the development program in Africa's agriculture, a lot of progress was made last year in the agriculture sector, he said.

With the year of women in 2015, Mwencha said they would be focusing on empowerment of women in Africa and taking advantage of the continent's demographic dividend of the 1 billion plus people.

While expanding the scope in terms of cooperation with the international community, the deputy chairperson said AU is focusing on ways of how Africans finance their programs.

AU is looking at alternatives ways of financing, he said, adding the biggest challenge Africa has now is to bring about investment in "those key areas that will help us to transform our economy." Endi