Office of the Special Adviser on Africa (OSAA)

Partnership on Africa’s Integration and Development Agenda (PAIDA)

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (right) meets with Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, Chairperson of the African Union Commission. UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe

The new framework is a joint United Nations-African Union (UN-AU) proposal for a successor programme to the United Nations Ten-Year Capacity-Building Programme to the African Union (TYCBP-AU) that is due to expire in December 2016. The Partnership between the United Nations and the African Union on Africa’s Integration and Development Agenda (PAIDA) is anchored on and aligned to the aspirations and goals of the African Union’s Agenda 2063 and integrates the objectives and goals of other major continental socio-economic development frameworks such as New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD). It is also closely aligned to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Like the TYCBP-AU, PAIDA has a ten-year timeframe, 2017 - 2027, and its implementation will be closely aligned to the flagship projects contained in Agenda 2063’s First 10-Year Implementation Plan.

PAIDA outlines seven main principles that should guide the UN-AU cooperation, namely:

ownership and leadership by the African Union (AU),
respect for Africa’s policy space,
faithfulness to commitments made,
consultation and coordination,
accountability,
strategic partnership (including with the Regional Economic Communities (RECs) and NEPAD Planning and Coordinating Agency [NEPAD Agency]), and
proactive engagement.

The priority areas of PAIDA cover 13 thematic issues. These are:

infrastructure and trade,
economic transformation,
regional integration,
gender equality and women’s empowerment,
agriculture,
private sector development,
health,
education and training,
natural resource governance,
climate change,
democracy and governance,
human rights and the rule of law, and
peace and security.

PAIDA also highlights a number of cross cutting implementation issues, which the UN is called upon to support; namely:

advocacy, programmatic and institutional support,
resource support, and
reporting.

PAIDA was jointly developed by the UN-AU Technical Working Group that was established in November 2014, on the recommendations of the 15th Session of the Regional Coordination Mechanism for Africa that took place in Abuja, Nigeria in March 2014. PAIDA outcome document from the Technical Working Group was adopted by the 25th African Union Summit in decision (Assembly/AU/Dec.587(XXV) and transmitted to the African Group at the UN in New York, for onward submission to the United Nations General Assembly.

The Office of the Special Adviser on Africa (OSAA) and PAIDA

OSAA was a member of the Technical Working Group that developed PAIDA document.

In addition, PAIDA document in its paragraph 113, specifically states that OSAA will continue its global advocacy and policy advisory activities on behalf of the African Union, NEPAD Agency and the RECs, within the context of implementation of PAIDA.

New: High-level Forum: The Africa We Want in 2030, 2063 and Beyond (20 April 2016)

On 20 April 2016, the Office of the Special Adviser on Africa (OSAA), the Government of Sweden and the African Union Commission will be organising a full day forum on “Early Action and Results on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, in the context of the First Ten-Year Implementation Plan of Africa’s Transformative Agenda 2063: Opportunities and Challenges”.

Recent Event

IDTFA Briefing (13 October 2015)

The leaders of key implementing bodies of the PAIDA—the African Union Commission (AUC), NEPAD, APRM and the RECs—held a briefing to address the IDTFA at the principal level and to raise awareness of PAIDA, the African Union’s recently adopted framework for the United Nations and African Union Partnership.