27 March 2011: The African Union Commission and the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) Agency have launched the Africa Platform for Development Effectiveness (APDEv), which is aimed at bringing consultation, coordination and a common voice to Africa’s development perspectives, strategies and policies.

APDEv, launched in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in partnership with the African Union, the UN Development Programme (UNDP), the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), the World Bank Institute, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit, the African Development Bank (AfDB) and the Institute for Security Studies, is a physical and virtual multi-stakeholder platform and organizing mechanism to mobilize African policymakers and practitioners to achieve sustainable development. Its goal is to help the African continent “tackle development head-on” and take ownership of its own development agenda.

The three pillars of the new Platform are capacity development, aid effectiveness and South-South cooperation, all geared towards matching internal and external resources with African priorities, and ensuring development effectiveness by improving development practice for sustainability, both in the outcomes and the quality of results. The Platform aims to be a multi-stakeholder forum, a knowledge base and mutual learning hub, a network for knowledge, policy and practice links, and an integrated community of practice. One of its anticipated outcomes for the coming year includes a report on the state of capacity building in Africa.

Speaking at the official launch of the platform, UN Under Secretary-General and UNECA Executive Secretary Abdoulie Janneh highlighted that, for Africa to be globally competitive, there is a need for greater investment in knowledge and learning. He noted that knowledge- and experience-sharing is already taking place on different scales among African countries, but that there was a need for coordination among these initiatives and with national development plans and processes, and that the Platform would provide the required space for all African stakeholders to generate, synthesize, harness and utilize knowledge as a means of addressing the continent’s challenges. [UNECA Press Release][APDEv Website]