May I, first of all, thank Their Excellencies, João Manuel Gonçalves Lourenço, President of the Republic of Angola and Current Chairman of the African Union and Taye Atske Selassie, President of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, for having graced this Handing over

Ceremony with their presence.

I would then like to address you, Excellency, Current Chairman, to reiterate my sincere congratulations. You know the great esteem and the high consideration you enjoy with your colleagues, Heads of State and Government and all of us. You have all my encouragement and you will

always have my unwavering support.

Finally, I would like to reiterate, Mr. President Taye Selassie, my grateful thanks and gratitude to the Government and people of Ethiopia for the brotherly and warm hospitality accorded to us during our stay in Addis

Ababa.

To you, my brother and friend, Mahmoud Ali Youssouf, Chairperson of the African Union Commission, my long standing colleague, this Organisation is not foreign to you, you know it very well and I have no doubt about your capability to carry it to new heights. But you can count, without reservation, on my availability, whenever you deem that we can be useful to you in anything for the success of the difficult and exhilarating mission

that you are about to embark upon.

To you my dear sister Selma Haddadi, Deputy Chairoerson of the Commission, we have known you as a worthy Representative of your great country, Algeria. We know the strength of your commitment and your professionalism. We have no doubt that you will perform your mission

efficiently for good results.

To my Brothers and Sisters Commissioners, your selection by the Panel of Eminent Personalities already, in itself, sheds an important light on your qualities. Your confirmation by our Policy Organs, underscores such virtues and good qualifications. I have no doubt that all of this augurs well for a great job and significant results for the benefit of our

Continental Organisation.

I extend my gratitude to the Commissioners Joséfa Sacko, Albert Muchanga, Amani Abou Zeid, Minata Cessouma Samate, Bankole Adoye, Mohamed Bel Hocine. Each of you six made wholehearted efforts to promote the Agenda 2063 and the programmes of the Department of which you were in charge.

In this collective work you have all shown, with your respective teams, immense technical and professional qualities that have raised the status of our Organisation in a difficult Regional and international context. I congratulate you and thank you sincerely.

The Heads of the Organs and Specialised Technical Agencies also placed themselves in the forefront of our struggles for a better future for the peoples of the Continent. I wish to thank and congratulate them. Finally, I must proudly stress the beautiful team spirit and brotherhood that marked, during these eight years, our support for the crowning of our collective action.

I had already told the Executive Council and the Assembly the feeling of these moments of dreamt freedom and meaningful separation. The peoples, the places and the air floating, at the top, all this is a source of joy, happiness certainly, but also of something that you already feel missing. You maty rest assured that I will not forget so quickly, maybe never, these moments.

On this occasion, I would like to express my thanks to all my colleagues and to all the staff of the Union, here present or elsewhere, building the great PanAfricanist project. I would like to congratulate them on their remarkable work with tangible and lasting results despite the difficulties of all kinds and the immense challenges.

To the Representatives of the Staff Association, I would like to tell them that my sympathy, my gratitude and my esteem will remain engraved, that I have known them directly or simply heard about their endurance and their sacrifices.

I stress the expectations and challenges you will face but also the opportunities that will open up. We did what we were able to do. I repeated that it certainly had shortcomings and inadequacies. I am sure that with your new impetus and your faith in our Organisation, you will go beyond the frontiers which, today, are ours and the heritage that we leave you.

Everywhere, as you know as much as I do, we opened vistas. It will behove you to deepen, correct, change, imagine new solutions that we have not been able to establish or find. The dynamics of change will be

your best support. Dare to tread where we could not go!

In this new era you can count on the dynamism of the economically active forces of the Continent, in particular, women and youths, but also and very modestly on us, who today are bidding you farewell. We will remain disciplined soldiers, even in retirement, to contribute what we have left

of energy and what we have been able to garner as experience.