AGA Areas of Focus

AGA was created primarily to coordinate efforts and ensure synergy between various initiatives aimed at deepening a culture of democratic governance, respect of human rights and effective humanitarian assistance. In this regard, AGA works through members of its platform consisting of AU organs and RECs with a mandate on governance, democracy, human rights and humanitarian affairs and harmonize shared values instruments

The AGA has a formal mandate to coordinate evaluation and reporting on implementation and compliance of AU norms on governance and democracy. A state reporting process, including guidelines were developed to guide reporting on the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance (ACDEG) as per its Articles 44, 45 and 49. So far, one state report (Togo) has been received.

AGA seeks to foster dialogue and share comparable lessons as well as generate and contribute to knowledge on trends, challenges, opportunities and prospects for improving governance and democracy in Africa. Through its knowledge management work, AGA has facilitated the Palm Tree Circle Series, the DG Trends Debates and Africa Talks DG Trends in addition to various online foras. The flagship dialogue hosted on an annual basis by AGA is the High Level Dialogue on Democracy, Elections and Governance which is now in its sixth year.

At the heart of AGA’s work is enhancing popular participation and citizen’s engagement on issues pertaining to democracy, governance, human rights and humanitarian affairs as a way to realize a people-centred Africa. We realize that all of the efforts made are futile without the buy-in of the people who are expected to drive the change we want. AGA has developed an elaborate youth engagement strategy, dubbed AGA-YES to ensure the deliberate and meaningful engagement of over 60% of this continents human resources. It is also working on a women’s engagement strategy

The African Governance Architecture (AGA) complements its sister architecture, the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) - for without a situation of peace, much of the efforts to establish democratic governance are moot - and vice versa. AGA thus seeks to facilitate joint engagement and deepen its coordination with APSA. Particular areas of convergence include the areas of preventive diplomacy, conflict prevention and post-conflict as well as reconstruction and development.