UNIÃO AFRICANA

AFRICAN UNION	         UNION AFRICAINE
Addis Ababa, ETHIOPIA	P. O. Box 3243	Telephone: 517 700	Fax: 5130 36
 	website: www.au.int

DECLARATION ON SELF-RELIANCE
Decision No: Assembly/AU/Decl.5(XXV)

We, Heads of State and Government, meeting at our 25th Ordinary Session of the Assembly of the African Union in Johannesburg, South Africa, on 14-15 January 2015, adopt the First Ten-Year Implementation Plan of Agenda 2063 and its Financing Mechanism, as a step towards our collective vision for the level and depth of integration and development that our continent must achieve in the next 50 years;

1.	In doing so, we also recognise that in order to achieve the goals set out in 	Agenda 2063, Member States of need to take practical and concrete 	measures to achieve the self-reliance we set as our goal 35 years ago in the 	Lagos Plan of Action adopted in 1980;

2.	We reaffirm that self-reliance is not self-isolation, but a commitment to base 	the development of our continent primarily on own resources, and to mobilise 	resources within our continent for development;

3.	At this Summit, we have adopted the following package of measures for self- 	reliance:

	a)	The decision on alternate sources of funding, The revised assessed 		contribution and Scale of Assessments that will become effective 		from January 2016 whose objective is to ensure that in the 			medium term Member States of the Union fund 100 percent of the 			operating budget, 75 percent of the programme budget, and 25 			percent of the peace and security operations;

	b)	In addition, through the African Union Foundation that we have 		established for resource mobilisation on the continent, we work with 		the African people, including our private sector, to explore other 			innovative sources for funding our Union. In particular, and for the 		first time at our Summits, the African private sector made significant 		pledges that will augment the budgetary resources of our Union.

4.	We recognise that the long term solution to increasing the capacity of 	our Member States for self-reliance and taking full charge of the budgetary 	requirements of our Union, is in strengthening the capability of our economies 	both at country level and continent wide. In this regard, we reiterate our 	commitment to the implementation of the fast track programmes and initiatives 	of Agenda 2063;

5.	Africa must also be self-reliant in finding African solutions to African problems 	in the peace and security domain both in terms of funding and enhancing our 	collective capability to respond to conflict situations. The African Capacity for 	Immediate Response to Crises (ACIRC) is the interim mechanism that we 	have created for this purpose while we are operationalizing our African 	Standby Force;

6.	We believe that this package of self-reliance measures will not only place 	our continent on the path towards a vision contained in Agenda 2063. It will 	also reverse the dependency that hampers the development of the full 	potential of our continent.