Cluster Objectives

Cluster Members

Report of the First Meeting of the Advocacy and Communications Cluster

9 July 2004, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Following the endorsement by the plenary meeting of the Regional Consultative Mechanism, the 7th Cluster of the Mechanism was established under the chairmanship of OSAA. This cluster held its first meeting on 9 July 2004.The summary of the meeting is presented below.

Present:

Agostinho Zacarias OSAA, (Chair)
Timothy Bandora UNDP
Susan Makonyana ECA
Ambassador Dede ECA (consultant)

Thaninga Shope-Lynney NEPAD

OSAA was asked to make a presentation on the advocacy and communications strategy circulated earlier and the following were the comments on the strategy document:

a) The role of Regional Economic Communities in clear it needs to be further clarified.

b) The strategy should also articulate a clear role for the civil society organizations of regional character such as African Parliamentarian Union, Business Round Table, African Commission of Jurist, etc.

c) There should be a clearer link between the global and national strategies to ensure continuity and consistency in the work

d) The role of other UN agencies need to be further clarified.

e) The Strategy was flexible enough to accommodate and be in line with national and regional strategies.

The notion of leading agencies was discussed and approved/ Thus OSAA would lead advocacy and communications campaign on NEPAD at global level; ECA at regional level, working with RECs, sub-regional organizations, civil society organisations of regional character, and UNDP will take the lead at the country level where it will be working closely with the NEPAD Secretariat to promote NEPAD at the National level.

The meeting agreed that sensitization on NEPAD needs to be stronger at the country level and this will provide a stronger base for advocacy and communications activities at the regional and global level.

In addition to the cluster, the meeting agreed on two other coordination meetings:

a) All NEPAD communicators to take stock of the NEPAD campaigns, Progress constraints and lessons learnt.

b) A Meeting on Management and Planning issues involving NEPAD, RECS and the UN Group composed of OSAA, DPI, ECA and UNDP.

c) A Steering Group of the Cluster was established under the Chairmanship of OSAA which will include ECA, UNDP and DPI. The first meeting of the Steering Group will be in October during the General Assembly in this meeting the Group will i) get a feedback of the work that the NEPAD Secretariat is conducting at the country level; ii) fine tune the strategy - especially the connection between national and global activities - in order to publish it; discuss potential programmes;