Continental Frameworks

Several continental frameworks have been developed to address the development of key sectors such as Agriculture, trade, transport, energy and mining. These sectors are seen as key in enabling Member States of the Union to achieve their development goals. To ensure coherence and convergence, these frameworks have been captured in the priority areas of the First Ten Year Implementation Plan.

They continental frameworks include the Comprehensive African Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP), The Programme for Infrastructural Development in Africa (PIDA), The African Mining Vision (AMV, Science Technology Innovation Strategy for Africa (STISA), Boosting Intra African Trade (BIAT), Accelerated Industrial Development for Africa (AIDA)

Comprehensive African Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP)

CAADP is a continental initiative to help African countries eliminate hunger and reduce poverty by raising economic growth through agriculture-led development. Through CAADP, African governments agreed to allocate at least 10% of national budgets to agriculture and rural development, and to achieve agricultural growth rates of at least 6% per annum. Underlying these main targets are targets for reducing poverty and malnutrition, for increasing productivity and farm incomes, and for improvements in the sustainability of agricultural production and use of natural resources. CAADP also supports member states to enhance resilience to climate variability through development of disaster preparedness policies and strategies and early warning response systems and social safety nets.

CAADP has 4 priority areas namely:

1. Extending the area under sustainable land management and reliable water control systems
2. Improving rural infrastructure and trade-related capacities for market access
3. Increasing food supply, reducing hunger, and improving responses to food emergency crises
4. Improving agriculture research, technology dissemination and adoption

In addition CAADP places emphasis on African ownership and African leadership to set the agricultural agenda and the stage for agricultural change. This change emphasises Africans truly being the drivers of CAADP, rather than the more typical case of leadership and direction coming from donors or other international partners. CAADP is thus an inward looking policy framework where African leaders who have championed CAADP in their countries can influence their counterparts towards agricultural transformation

Find out more about our programmes to boost Africa’s Agricultural productivity 

The Programme for Infrastructural Development in Africa (PIDA)

The Programme for Infrastructure Development in Africa, PIDA, provides a common framework for African stakeholders to build the infrastructure necessary for more integrated transport, energy, ICT and trans-boundary water networks to boost trade, spark growth and create jobs. As a multi sector programme PIDA) is dedicated to facilitating continental integration through improved regional infrastructure and Implementing it will help address the infrastructure deficit that severely hampers Africa’s competitiveness in the world market, transform the way business is done and help deliver a well-connected and prosperous Africa. 

PIDA’s long-term strategic planning for Africa’s regional infrastructure has been conducted under the coordination of the African Union Commission, the African Union NEPAD Planning and Coordinating Agency, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa and the African Development Bank in cooperation with all African stakeholders.

Find out more about our initiatives to improve investment in infrastructure extractive in Africa 

The African Mining Vision (AMV)

The African Mining Vision calls for the “Transparent, equitable and optimal exploitation of mineral resources to underpin broad-based sustainable growth and socio-economic development.”

The AMV envisages an African mining sector that is:

1. Knowledge-driven and contributes to growth & development which is fully integrated into a single African market;
2. Sustainable and well-governed and effectively garners and deploys resource rents, is safe, healthy, gender & ethnically inclusive, environmentally friendly, socially responsible and appreciated by surrounding communities;
3. A key component of a diversified, vibrant and globally competitive industrialising African economy
4. Helping to establish a competitive African infrastructure platform, through the maximisation of its propulsive local & regional economic linkages;
5. Optimising Africa’s finite mineral resource endowments and that is diversified, incorporating both high value metals and lower value industrial minerals at both commercial and small-scale levels;
6. Harnessing the potential of artisanal and small-scale mining to stimulate local/national entrepreneurship, improve livelihoods and advance integrated rural social and economic development;
7. A major player in a vibrant and competitive national, continental and international capital and commodity markets

Find out more about our initiatives to manage and grow Africa’s extractive industries 

Science Technology Innovation Strategy for Africa (STISA),

The AU Science, Technology and Innovation Strategy for Africa places science, technology and innovation at the epicentre of Africa’s socio-economic development and growth and the impact the sciences can have across critical sectors such as agriculture, energy, environment, health, infrastructure development, mining, security and water among others. The strategy envision an Africa whose transformation is led by innovation and which will create a Knowledge-based Economy.

STISA is anchored on six (6) priority areas namely

1. Eradication of Hunger and Achieving Food Security
2. Prevention and Control of Diseases
3. Communication (Physical and Intellectual Mobility)
4. Protection of our Space
5. Living together in peace & harmony to build the society
6. Wealth Creation.

The strategy further defines four mutually reinforcing pillars which are prerequisite conditions for its success namely: building and/or upgrading research infrastructures; enhancing professional and technical competencies; promoting entrepreneurship and innovation; and providing an enabling environment for Science Technology and Innovation (STI) development in the African continent.

Find out more about STISA and our other programmes aimed to boost innovation and to grow science and technology on the continent 

Boosting Intra African Trade (BIAT)

The objective of BIAT to deepen Africa’s market integration and significantly increasing the volume of trade that African countries undertake amongst themselves from the current levels of about 10-13% to 25% or more within the next decade. The BIAT Action Plan provides for the assessment of Africa’s overall trade flows and the potential for boosting intra-African trade by addressing key priority areas (both supply-side and demand-side) and identifying which areas are important to make trade an important driver of regional integration, structural transformation and development in Africa.

The BIAT Action Plan identifies seven (7) critical pillars (Clusters) to address challenges facing intra-African trade such as infrastructural bottlenecks, improving trade facilitation, enhancing opportunities for intra-African trade through trade information networks, addressing financial needs of traders and economic operators through improved finance, addressing adjustment costs associated with FTAs and trade liberalisation to ensure equitable outcomes for Member States.

Specifically, the Clusters are:

1. Trade Policy
2. Trade Facilitation
3. Productive Capacity
4. Trade Related Infrastructure
5. Trade Finance
6. Trade Information and Factor Market integration

Find out more about our initiatives to foster regional integration and to boost intra-African trade 

Accelerated Industrial Development for Africa (AIDA)

The Action Plan for the Accelerated Industrial Development of Africa (AIDA), is a pan-African programme developed by the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) in 2008 at the request of the African Union, together with African governments and the private sector. The strategy aims to mobilise both financial and nonfinancial resources and enhance Africa’s industrial performance.

The AIDA focuses on driving the integration of industrialisation in national development policies especially in poverty alleviation strategies, development and implementation of an industrial policy with priority accorded to maximizing the use of local productive capacities and inputs, through value addition and local processing of the abundant natural resources of the country. AIDA also seeks to support the development of small-scale and rural industries, including the informal sectors as well as intermediate and capital goods industries with high linkages to other sectors of the economy as potential sources of employment creation.

The AIDA strategy further seeks to improve Investment and Mining Codes to support local processing of mineral resources whilst at the same time encouraging mineral resources- rich countries to set aside portions of commodity price-surge related premiums for investment in programmes/projects of economic diversification. The programme also expects the continent to leverage Africa’s Partnerships, especially with the Newly Industrializing and Emerging Powers of the South, for the development and transfer of technology, for the establishment of joint industrial enterprises in Africa, and for greater market access for African manufactured products.

Find out more about AIDA by visiting