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Activating the UNten-year capacitybuilding programmefor the African Union12 th Session of Regional CoordinationMechanism of United Nations Agenciesand Organizations Working in Africa inSupport of the African Union and its NEPADProgramme21-22 November 2011Addis Ababa, EthiopiaIt will be recalled that at our 11th Session last year, we were confrontedwith an inconvenient truth: that the framework for ourTen year capacity building programme in support of the African Unionwas not accompanied by concrete programmes fully reflectingthe priorities of the AU. That was why the 11th session directed theRCM-Africa Secretariat to consult our AU colleagues in order to fillthis gap and it is also the reason why this 12th session is devotedfully to the question of capacity building of the AU.As part of this process, we held a retreat early September 2011 todeliberate on this matter and elaborate a concrete and implementablework programme to energise the Ten Year Capacity Building Programme.The retreat helped us better understand the real capacityneeds of the AU and revealed some gaps in the workings of RCM-Africa. Indeed, our existing structure does not address organizationaland institutional aspects such as human resource needs, finance,strategic planning and conference management nor does it coverissues of economic development in the macro sense, regional integrationand statistics. This meeting is a good opportunity to furtherdiscuss these issues.The Kuriftu retreat also yielded a draft work programme with logframesof planned activities and expected outcomes accompaniedby allocation of responsibilities, resource needs and time frames. IIntegrating Africa177