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The first female Prime Minister of Mozambique, Luisa Diogo
How We Approach Design and Implementation
• Our work starts with trying to fully understand a challenge that needs a solution. We conduct research to identify current conditions, laws, regulations, policies and cultural considerations.
• We then try developing and reviewing as we go along, proposed changes to policies, laws, programs, and actions. Were it is necessary we lead advocacy campaigns to effect the changes we want to see effected by the AU and its Members.
• We then plan and assist in the adoption and implementation of these changes. We monitor and evaluate the implementation to learn from the process and recommend further changes and improvements where appropriate.
We have a range of activities and programs anyone wishing to participate can get involve with. Your donations to AU Watch help make our work possible and amplify the influence AU Watch has in the public policy debate. They help fund our people, ideas, development projects and media and outreach programs.
Did you know that today, over 48% of people living in sub-Saharan Africa live in absolute poverty with many of the AUMS still grappling with a democratic deficit?That is not too surprising as a club of authoritarian leaders, previously led by Strongman Sisi have maintained an iron grip on power in parts of Africa, either by amending laws to extend their terms of office, hosting rubber-stamp elections or repressing opposition and civil society. As you are probably aware, eight leaders have wielded power for more than 20 years; three of them have been at the helm for more than 30 years. Equatorial Guinea’s President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo is now leading the elite gerontocracy club (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-42009211) with Paul Biya of Cameroon and Yoweri Museveni not too far back.
Many of the AUMS have signed and ratified numerous instruments but have failed to live by them. And that’s where you come in. At AU Watch we are demanding that we are properly consulted and included in the AU project. So, we have written an invite for ourselves to the AUMS club. We are all AU – aren’t we? So we have a right, all of us to be ‘sitted’ around the table to discuss what is best for all of us. Through media, communication and outreach work, and through our various activities and interventions on all areas of the AU, and through the papers we write, the ideas we generate and the communities we are building, AU Watch shapes policy choices and strategies to create a more people-centred, secure and prosperous Africa.
Join us and become part of the regional fight against corruption, social in justice and poor governance. Each one of us can make a difference and together we can change happen.
Why you matter
• How well do you know how the AU and its Members operate? The decisions they make affect you, whether you know it or not, or like it or not. AU Watch is the peoples’ organization. It was established because all of its original founders and supports felt alienated from this ‘creature’ called the O/AU. Many of its supporters felt betrayed and disenchanted by the way AUMS treated the AU – the lack of funding, lack of space for citizens to participate in the affairs of the organization and lack of political will by the AUMS to implement the programs they had agreed upon were just some of the motivations to set up AU Watch.
For the last fifty-three years since the establishment of the AU the challenges it had faced have always been the same. A quote from the past Chairperson of the AU, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma during the 50th Anniversary celebrations, sums up the frustrations of even the civil servants working in the AU: “The challenge that the Union and the Commission face is the capacity to implement … decisions.” Dr kosazana Dlamini-Zuma’s comments are a reality check that even in the AU there is recognition that the AU and its Members need to change the way they relate to us. Of course if we leave it up to them very little will change. For over fifty three years, we have tried the approach of relying on our regional institutions and governments to deliver on their promises. Our political class for too long have acted as our spokes-people. They’ve done a bad job at it. The Report Card makes depressing reading.
The manner the AU and AUMS are structured make the masses the only force capable of challenging the status quo. We take on headlong the big issues that our state mangers would love us to leave alone. But we need your support. Without you we cannot get the elephant in the room to move. So together let’s take over the mic and speakers and printed pages and present our stories ourselves. Let’s send a clear a clear message to the AU and AUMS that we are determined to have an ALMIGHTY say in the manner in which we are being governed and the way the AU and AUMS conduct business, because it is no longer business as usual.Dr Nkosazana-Zuma, in launching Agenda 2063 in January 2014, stated that it’s about time to do things crazily to get the AU and the continent moving. So we are in good company. We empower people to question what their leaders are doing and why they are doing whatever they say they are doing. We also offer the AU and the AUMS a space to engage in public and private dialogue with some of Africa’s most excluded and vulnerable communities – people who are often excluded from decision-making.
What we can do together:
• Join us. Challenge corruption and social injustice in Africa.
• Fundraise for us. Social responsibility and solidarity in support of development and human rights go hand in hand.
• Donate to AU Watch. We use your donations to design and implement multi-year programs and projects.
• More ways to support and get involved.