AU Summit: Charumbira chairs PAP and EU steering Committee Meeting

Hon. Chief Fortune Charumbira

A High-Level Pan-African Programme (PANAF) Meeting has been held on the margins of the African Union Summit in Addis Ababa.

The meeting which was chaired Pan African Parliament’s (PAP) Fourth Vice President, Chief Fortune CHARUMBIRA resolved to extend their collaboration from March to July 2020, while the new 25 Million Euros Project on African Governance Architecture will start by the end of the year 2020.

Fortune CHARUMBIRA chaired the meeting on behalf of the Rt. Hon. Roger DANG, President of the Pan-African Parliament who could not attend due to national commitments.

This was contained in a release by PAP’s Media Officer Jeffrey ONGANGA.

The release disclosed that the 5^th Steering Committee meeting of the EU-PANAF Project was attended by the President of the African Court, European Union Representatives and Deputy President of the African Commission on Human Rights, among others.

PANAF was established in 2014 as the first ever European Union (EU) cooperation instrument that covers the whole continent in support of African integration efforts. It is one of the main EU financial instruments for the implementation of the Joint Africa-EU Strategy, funded under the EU's Development Cooperation Instrument (DCI) with € 845 million for 2014-2020.

Charumbira noted that the PANAF is one of the most significant and relevant assistance programmes that PAP values adding that the PAP Bureau continues to ensure that African citizens reap maximum benefits from this support.

“I am particularly pleased with the outcome of the meeting. The priority for PAP is to ensure that all AU member states ratify, domesticate and implement the AU Legal instruments in the field of good governance and human rights, as is the aim of the programme” he says.

In 2017, the European Union (EU) signed a 1.8 million Euros grant with the Pan-African Parliament (PAP) in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa.  This was the last of a series of five contracts the EU is funding under its €10 million action aimed at 'Strengthening the African Human Rights System' under the EU Pan-African Programme (PANAF).