SESSION I: POST-2015 DEVELOPMENT AGENDA

The current Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) focus primarily on welfare outcomes, and set a series of time-bound targets for achieving these. There is an emerging consensus that the post-2015 development agenda needs both to complete the unfinished business of the MDGs, and to go beyond these to address “the how”, and that it should also be integrated with the Rio+20 Sustainable Development Goals, and other processes such as the Global Partnership on Effective Development Cooperation. This involves looking again at the outcomes we want to achieve, how we can achieve these and how we should measure progress. Africa is developing a common position on these issues which will be considered at the next AU Summit in January 2014. A number of themes and priorities have emerged from the African regional consultations which have already been held. These are firmly grounded on the need to develop a strong and varied development finance base for sustainability. Critical to achieving this is a strong focus on Domestic Resource Mobilization (DRM) for both ownership and sustainability. Underlying the proposed priorities is the principle that the responsibility to attain development is Africa’s with key responsibility of partners being to honour their commitments and support country-led strategies. Africa is also emphasising the need for the global post-2015 development agenda to be the product of a fully transparent and inclusive intergovernmental process in which nations are equal and have an equal voice; an