This year, Africa Week will be held from 12 to 16 October 2015. It will be celebrated in the context of the 70th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations under the theme, “Agenda 2063 and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development: Moving from Aspirations to Reality”. The Week aims, inter alia, to popularize and mobilize international support for African Union (AU)’s Agenda 2063 and its First 10-Year Implementation Plan, as well as to highlight their synergies with the global 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
The main objective of Africa Week 2015 is to garner necessary support from Member States, civil society, the private sector and academia for Africa’s new transformative agenda. The Week also aims to identify the kind of support the United Nations could further extend to African regional and sub-regional organizations in the implementation of Agenda 2063, in ways that ensure synergy with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
Background
Africa Week is an annual week-long event organized on the margins of the General Assembly Debate on Africa’s development by the Office of the Special Adviser on Africa (OSAA) in close collaboration with its strategic partners including:
- Member States,
- the Economic Commission for Africa,
- the Department of Public Information,
- the African Union,
- the NEPAD Agency,
- the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) Secretariat and
- the African Regional Economic Communities (RECs).
Africa Week celebrates and showcases Africa’s continuous advancements and achievements with respect to social, economic, political and environmental development. The Week also brings to the fore awareness on the new and emerging challenges confronting the continent, with an aim to mobilize international support at the global level for Africa’s development priorities and its inclusive transformative agenda.
Since its launch in 2010, Africa Week has evolved to focus on the wide range of Africa’s development priorities, covering the areas of peace, security, governance, human rights, socio-economic, and environmental development.
Each year, Africa Week features a series of high-level events to engage Member States and other stakeholders on an overarching theme that addresses current priorities on the continent.
In particular, in 2014, the overarching theme for Africa Week was “The Africa We Want: Support of the United Nations System to the African Union's Agenda 2063.”
Over the past four years, participation in the Week has not only increased and widened, but also become high profile with the United Nations Secretary-General having launched the event in the recent past. The UN Deputy Secretary-General and the President of the General Assembly regularly actively participate in the Week, which now features the active participation of the African Union Commission and the African RECs, as well as representatives of civil society, the private sector, academia, African Diaspora and the media.
