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Photo: Joint Press Conference with Deputy Prime Minister & Minister of Foreign Affairs of Bulgaria, Ekaterina Zaharieva (second from left), and Jamaica's Minister of Foreign Affairs & Foreign Trade, Kamina Johnson Smith (third from left), flanked by ACP Secretary General Dr. P I Gomes (second from right). Credit: ACP Press.

By Robert Johnson

BRUSSELS | LOMÉ (IDN) – African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries and the European Union will walk the talk on global governance by organising joint activities during United Nations conferences this year, according to co-presidents of the Joint ACP-EU Council of Ministers.

The Council issued a joint declaration reaffirming its commitment to the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and to the attainment of the long-term goals of the Paris Climate Change Agreement.

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Photo: Pre-Session Panel with ACP Secretary-General Dr P I Gomes in the centre. Credit: ACP Secretariat

LOMÈ (ACP-IDN) - Prior to the opening of the 107th session of the ACP Council of Ministers, consultations took place in order to hear the views from the various regional organisations on how they perceived the future for the ACP Group as it seeks to finalise its Negotiating Mandate. A Special session was held on 27th May 2018 so that all countries could voice their concerns and views. The consensus at the end of the day was that the ACP draft mandate was to be presented to the formal session of Council on 29th May for consideration.

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Photo: 7th Summit of ACP Heads of State and Government in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea in 2012. Credit: ACP Press.

By Robert Johnson

BRUSSELS (ACP-IDN) – Seventy-nine African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries are set to speak with one voice as they prepare to adopt a negotiating mandate for a pact with the European Union (EU) after the Cotonou Agreement expires in February 2020. ACP Government Ministers will convene on May 27 for preparatory discussions dedicated to post-Cotonou negotiations.

Two days later, the ACP Council of Ministers meeting in Lomé, the capital of Togo in West Africa, for their 107th Session on May 29-30 will deliberate on repositioning the ACP as "a more effective global player" within the overarching framework of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development including 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

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Photo credit: The Financial Gazette, Zimbabwe

By Jeffrey Moyo

HARARE (ACP-IDN) – Enrolment in primary education in developing countries has reached 91 per cent but 57 million children remain out of school. More than half of children that have not enrolled in school live in 48 countries from Sub-Saharan Africa, which are members of the 79 African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States (ACP). An estimated 50 per cent of out-of-school children of primary school age live in conflict-affected areas.

Sub Saharan Africa is home to 17 of the 33 countries and territories the International Finance Corporation (IFC) of the World Bank Group classifies as 'fragile or conflict affected'. The IFC Conflict Affected States in Africa Initiative (CASA) is active in Burundi, the Central African Republic, Cote d'Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Guinea, Liberia, Mali, Sierra Leone, and South Sudan.

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Photo: Mining impacts at least two of the 17 Goals: SDG9 (Infrastructure, Innovation, and Industrialization) and SDG8 (Employment and Economic Growth). Credit: Prossy Nandudu | IDN-INPS.

By Prossy Nandudu

KAMPALA (ACP-IDN) – With the African population expected to increase by roughly 50 percent over the next 18 years to over 1.8 billion in 2035, demands for mineral resources will also climb sharply to meet the need for additional housing units, roads, energy and other urban infrastructure using development minerals, averred Dr Patrick Gomes, Secretary General of the African, Caribbean, Pacific (ACP) Group of States.

"In most ACP countries, growth rates are recorded due to the construction, mining and transport sectors. Interventions in this sector may be an effective way to help countries achieve the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030," he told a high-level ministerial meeting of the Group at the ACP Secretariat early this year in Brussels.

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Photo (left to right): ACP Secretary General Dr. Patrick I- Gomes, Samoa Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi, and Ambassador Sheila Sealy Monteith of Jamaica and Chairperson of the ACP Committee of Ambassadors

BRUSSELS (ACP-IDN) – Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi of Samoa met with Ambassadors of African, Caribbean and Pacific Countries in Brussels on April 23, urging them to work together towards building genuine and durable partnership in combating climate change.

The call acquires particular significance in view of the fact that under the Prime Minister's leadership Samoa has become an international point of reference in terms of combating climate thereby making him one of the most visible and influential spokespersons on climate issues in the Pacific region.

During his address, the Samoa Prime Minister stressed the importance of the ACP Group working in solidarity with all regions of the world.

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Photo: Disaster risk experts. Credit: ACP

By ACP Press

BRUSSELS (ACP-IDN) – Experts from all the six ACP regions Cariforum, Pacific, Southern Africa, West Africa, Central Africa and Eastern Africa gathered on April 24-25 April, 2018 in Brussels to discuss natural risk management and climate change challenges in ACP countries.

As the Africa, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) Group of States include some of the most disaster-prone and climate-vulnerable nations in the world, the meeting served as a solid framework to guide the Group’s follow up strategy for Disaster Risk Management for the next five-year period 2018-2023.

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Photo: An EU-backed private equity fund plans to invest in renewable energy firms across sub-Saharan Africa. Credit: Brookhaven National Laboratory

By Jeffrey Moyo

MWENEZI (ACP-IDN) – Sixty-seven-year old Sarudzai Msipa heavily blows air in and out of her mouth, seated in the open-air on a goat skin mat outside her hut as she battles to revive a dying fire on her cooking place set up in the middle of her yard at her remote home in Mwenezi district in Zimbabwe’s Masvingo Province.

Just three sticks are in the fire to keep it alive and there is no sign of leftover firewood nearby. To Msipa, this means times are tough for her and many other villagers as the energy hunger takes a knock on them in this part of Southern Africa.

Even getting solar for lighting, is a non-starter for the Southern African region's many rural dwellers like Msipa who have to bear the brunt of the region’s deepening energy hunger.

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Image credit: ACP-EU

By Devendra Kamarajan

NAIROBI (ACP-IDN) – Members of the Joint Parliamentary Assembly from the East Africa Region of the ACP Group and their European Parliament counterparts have called for aiming at "stronger South-South and triangular cooperation and maintenance of the ACP Group’s unity and solidarity" in a successor treaty to the Cotonou Agreement that expires in 2020.

The communiqué emerging from the 15th Regional Meeting of the ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly (JPA) from April 11-13, 2018 in the Kenyan capital Nairobi stressed agreement among JPA members from the East Africa region that "a future agreement should build upon the acquis of Cotonou and integrate new global realities and in particular regional specificities, including for small island developing states."

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Photo credit: Kenya Parliament

By Robert Johnson

BRUSSELS (ACP-IDN) – The co-presidents of the ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly (JPA) have welcomed the commitment of the 79-nation African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) Group of States and the 28-nation European Union (EU) to negotiate a successor Agreement to the ACP-EU Cotonou Partnership Agreement. The 15th Regional Meeting of the JPA took place in Kenya's capital Nairobi from April 11-13, 2018.

The Agreement, signed in Cotonou on June 23, 2000, was concluded for a 20-year period from 2000 to 2020. It is the most comprehensive partnership agreement between developing countries and the EU. In 2010, ACP-EU cooperation was adapted to new challenges such as climate change, food security, regional integration, State fragility and aid effectiveness.

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  1. Africa Grapples With Financing Climate Change Programmes
  2. ACP Group Looks Forward To Becoming 'Effective Global Player'
  3. Caribbean States Share Common Values & Interests with Other ACP Countries
  4. Caribbean Faith Leaders Call for Debt Relief and More
  5. Infrastructural Boom Spreads Across Southern Africa

SDGs

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ACP-IDN

This website is a joint project of the Secretariat of the ACP Group of States and IDN, a flagship agency of the International Press Syndicate (INPS) and its partner, the Global Cooperation Council. It serves as a source for development news and monitoring Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in African, Caribbean and Pacific countries.

The ACP Group comprises: Sub-Saharan Africa (48), The Caribbean (16), The Pacific (15).

The ACP Group´s main objectives are:

Sustainable development of its Member-States and their gradual integration into the global economy, which entails making poverty reduction a matter of priority and establishing a new, fairer, and more equitable world order;

Coordination of the activities of the ACP Group in the framework of the implementation of ACP-EC Partnership Agreements;

Consolidation of unity and solidarity among ACP States, as well as understanding among their peoples;

Establishment and consolidation of peace and stability in a free and democratic society.

 

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This website – launched on July 1, 2016 – is a joint project of the Secretariat of the ACP Group of States and IDN, a flagship agency of the International Press Syndicate (INPS) and its partner, the Global Cooperation Council. It serves as a source for development news and monitoring Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in African, Caribbean and Pacific countries.

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