Flag-raising ceremony marks AU Day

Accra, May 25, GNA - President Denis Sassou-N'Guesso of Congo, Chairman of the African Union (AU), on Wednesday called on Africans to use all means at their disposal to make Africa accomplished, mature, accountable and respected worldwide.

This, he noted, could be possible only by the full attainment of integration and development. "An integration that must be experienced by all not as the spoliation of national sovereignties, but rather as a vibrant mutation that bears inside itself the germs of unity and intelligence".

"That is what we must relentlessly work at, in order to build together a formidable enterprise of heart and reason," he added. President Sassou-N'Guesso made the call in a message read for him during a flag raising ceremony to commemorate the 43rd AU Day. The Day was themed: "Working Together for Regional Integration and Development".

Mr Mohammed Ben Labat, Malian High Commissioner to Ghana and Dean of the African Diplomatic Corps read the speech.

Instituted in 1963, the erstwhile Organization of African Unity (OAU), now AU, the Day commemorates the legitimate aspirations of the peoples of Africa and affords member states the opportunity to reaffirm their commitment to the objectives and ideals of the AU.

The ceremony, witnessed by a cross section of Ghanaians and foreigners alike had a parade of two contingents from the Ghana Navy consisting 67 men and three officers in attendance.

President Sassou-N'Guesso reiterated the call for peace within conflict areas in Africa, saying: "We all have to mobilize and work for peace to become one tangible reality for the entire peoples of Africa." "Our common ambition, our joint dream must be that, in peace and unity, Africa, besides its partners and the international community, always heads for high destinies so that the roads to happiness and progress are open for all our states and all our people". Admitting that considerable improvement had been recorded with the termination of numerous hotbeds of tension on the continent, he said efforts were still required in too many cases.

"In one sense, our work consists in helping towards consolidation of all peace processes in countries in post-conflict situations. "In the other, it is to sustain our commitment so that, from Somalia to Cote d'Ivoire, from Sudan to Chad, peace and reconstruction come in place of war division and destruction," he said.

President Sassou-N'Guesso appealed to G8 countries to take Africa and its integration and development projects into account within the comprehensive concerns of global issues.

He said the linkages being established between Africa and the various partners such as the European Union, the United States of America, China, Japan, South Korea and India, the United Nations and its structures gladdened the hearts of most leaders of Africa. President Sassou-N'Guesso said the leaders did welcome all the initiatives aimed at seeking and mobilizing innovative development financing for the continent.

Without sources of finance the objectives of the Millennium Development Goals would not be attained by most countries in Africa, he said and urged his colleagues to sustain action agreed under NEPAD to enable Africa to be ingenuous and productive.

President Sassou-N'Guesso said statistics from international financial institutions showed positive and encouraging trends in the development endeavour of most governments.

"However, we have to keep on persevering in the effort, so that favourable growth rates attained can really translate into a durable standard of living for our peoples." he said.

Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, Minister for Foreign Affairs urged Africans to use the Day to reflect on the continent's past, its present state of affairs and review the way forward.

Africa's potential to become part of the developed, prosperous world, might best be realised if member-states pooled together the enormous human and material resources that abound on the continent. The AU's blueprint, the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), was rooted in the notion that Africa's development goals could be attained not through handouts but rather through proper norms of behaviour of citizenry as well as governments, he said.

Nana Akufo-Addo explained that this required strong, principled adherence to the values of democracy, respect for human rights and accountability, which lead to the efficient use of national resources and good governance.

He pledged Ghana's commitment to continue to play an active role in helping to transform conflict zones into 'comfort zones', where children would no longer carry bullets to shoot, but rather carry books to school.

The Foreign Minister said for African countries, the pursuit of regional integration was becoming an inevitable choice, which they were making if they were to become competitive in the global village, where other regions were coming together to harness their resources more effectively.

"Peace and democracy will provide the base for our regional integration initiatives to thrive," he said, stressing that, "the success of the regional integration programme would depended to a large extent on the training of the requisite human resource, which would be equipped with the skill to handle multi-national projects".

It would further require a change in mindset to engender acceptance of the strains on the traditional concepts of sovereignty that this would entail.