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• Building AU and RECs capacity for disaster response by trainingemergency response teams.The RCM Secretariat and its Clusters have also recorded severalachievements over the years. Key among these include: the establishmentof the joint AUC-ECA Secretariat with dedicated staff fromthe two institutions; strengthening of inter and intra-Cluster coordination;alignment of UN programmes to NEPAD priorities, andincreased ownership and leadership of RCM by AU - supported bycreation of NEPAD coordination unit at AUC.The achievements I have just highlighted have not always been withinthe context of the Ten-Year Capacity Building Programme. Moreover,while the multiplicity of capacity building actors assisting AU iscommendable, it comes with its own challenges including possibleduplication of efforts and waste of resources, especially in the absenceof proper coordination. Our effort to develop a joint and comprehensivework programme provides a unique opportunity to coordinatecapacity building interventions and mitigate these challenges.This will not only help in building synergies but also in maximizingthe collective impact of our interventions.In this respect, the importance of scaling up and demonstrating theresults of our interventions in a credible manner cannot be overemphasized.This is particularly true for the Ten Year Capacity BuildingProgramme for the AU that has been in existence for over four years.You would all agree that it has been difficult to convincingly reporton results of the Programme mostly because we have not articulateda logical framework linking capacity building interventions with expectedoutcomes and impacts. This Retreat therefore lays the foundationfor addressing this challenge as its outcome – in the form of adraft work programme - will provide the basis for objectively assessingour performance.Any work programme, as a management tool, is only useful to theextent that concrete modalities are put in place for its implementationand key actors are committed to the process. I therefore urgeyou to spend some time during this Retreat to reflect on the modalitiesfor implementing the capacity building interventions that youwill identify and retain for the work programme. In this regard, roles,responsibilities, implementation timeframes, and resource require-310 Part Five