Your Excellency President Macky Sall of the Republic of Senegal and Chairperson of ECOWAS

Your Excellency Muhammadu Buhari, President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and our gracious host of the Summit

Excellencies, Heads of State and Government and Leaders of Delegations of Economic Community of West African States

Excellency, Mr. Kadre Desire Ouedraogo, President of the ECOWAS Commission

Dr. Mohamed Ibn Chambas, Special Representative of the UNSG for West Africa

Excellencies, Heads of Institutions and Commissioners of ECOWAS

Honourable Ministers

Honourable Guests, and Members of the Diplomatic Community and Regional and International Organisations

Ladies and Gentlemen

I am very honoured to represent the African Union Commission at this 48th Ordinary Summit of the Authority of Heads of State and Government of ECOWAS, and to thank the President, the Government and People of the Federal Republic of Nigeria for their warm hospitality in this beautiful city of Abuja.

The Summit is an important milestone for ECOWAS, coming on the eve of the celebrations of the 40th anniversary of the Community. ECOWAS is an important component of the African Union, and what happens in this ECOWAS influences a lot on what happens on the African Union as a whole.

ECOWAS and the rest of Africa as a whole have made net progress over the last decade: sustained economic growth of over 5%, and with social indicators such as participation in education, tackling disease, maternal mortality, improved access to water and sanitation, moving in the right direction.

The strategies of investments at national, regional and continental levels in infrastructure, agriculture, education and regional energy pools, greater attention to science, technology and innovation, are all contributing towards this.

There is also a lot of effort that has been put in creating a peaceful continent. Progress has been made, though a lot more still needs to be done.

Excellencies, there is something that worries me; A few days ago, the UNDP launched its 2015 Human Development Report in Addis Ababa, with dividing the world into very high, high, medium and low levels of human development. What it shows, is that despite the growth and movement on many social indicators of the last decade, our situation in terms of the development of our people has not changed dramatically. We still have 37 African countries, more than two thirds, in the low human development categories.

This shows that there are things that we are not doing right, and with a few exceptions, we have widening inequalities in countries across the continent. It also shows that the economic growth is not inclusive, and we are not making the required impact on the lives of the majority of African people.

We must, therefore, ask ourselves the question as Africans: how can this situation persist, when Africa has land, water, forests, oceanic resources, minerals, oil and gas, as well as human resources in abundance, and yet the Africans remain poor?

This is why it is so important that we work together to implement Agenda 2063, which is inclusive of the global SDGs, but specific to African aspirations.

I’m saying we need to ask these questions, and confront the answers, the majority of African small island states, despite small population, who do not have minerals, oil, gas, gold or diamond that we take for granted; they have the people and the seas as their resource. It is clear that, through strong investments in their people, and through stability, peace, democratic and developmental governance, these countries are counted either in the medium or high development categories.

We are taking that ECOWAS is paying attention in creating peace and security, good governance and stability, build decentralized governance, and ensuring that young people, boys and girls are in school and remain in school, create good jobs and contribute to our industrialization; industrializing; provide conditions for innovation, and ensure that all African citizens, irrespective of their religion, language, gender can participate in the economic, social, political and cultural development of our continent.

Africa at present provides access to higher education to less than 6% of its young people. At the same time, research shows that with less than 10% participation in higher education, we simply reproduce the elite. More than 20% participation contributes to massification and over 40% means universal access. It is these latter groups of countries that are able to move decisively towards greater innovation, higher human development and higher economic development and incomes.

We must also act faster on the other continental tasks set out in Agenda 2063, such as increasing infrastructure development, which ECOWAS is working hard on, including transport, energy, ICT, water and sanitation, as well as industrialization and manufacturing, and guarantee our collective food security through agriculture and agro-processing.

We congratulate ECOWAS for entrenching and strengthening democracy and good governance, especially for overseeing the elections in five of its Member States this year, but also its interventions in Burkina Faso to help the people of this country determine their destiny. We are convinced that in the elections during 2016, ECOWAS shall ensure that these too are free, fair and peaceful, so that the will of the people is expressed.

Excellencies,
At the same time, we must redouble efforts to build peace and security everywhere, as we committed ourselves to silence the guns by 2020. We hail the efforts led by ECOWAS in Mali and the greater Sahel, and the collective efforts of the Multi-National Joint Task Force against terrorism and against extremism in the region.

We also commend ECOWAS, and the President of the Commission for their concerted efforts in the fight against the Ebola virus epidemic. We express our gratitude for herculean efforts by the three countries, Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone for their heroic national efforts, which enable us to be where we are today.

Excellencies,

The founders of ECOWAS identified the need for this community, founded on the principles of collective self-reliance and integration, as critical to peace, and to the social and economic development of the continent as a whole.

The African population - including in the ECOWAS region - is fast urbanizing, the majority are young, and over fifty percent are women. They must remain at the centre of our Agenda 2063, of everything we do and at the centre of our mission to build an Africa that is prosperous, integrated, and peaceful, driven by its own citizens and that plays a dynamic role in the world.

We are confident that ECOWAS, just as it is one of oldest Regional Economic Communities, we look to ECOWAS to help to ensure that this vision is realized.

I wish this 48th Ordinary Summit fruitful deliberations and look forward to the celebrations tomorrow.