The African Union agreed on Tuesday on a $158-million budget for 2005, a fourfold increase, in order to finance a series of ambitious projects.
”The budget for $158-million was approved by consensus by the whole of the executive council,” which groups ministers from the AU’s 53 member states, said Adam Thiam, spokesperson for AU Commission chief Alpha Omar Konare.
The AU’s budget for 2004 was $43-million. At a summit meeting of the organisation in July, the AU Commission, its executive arm, asked for a 2005 budget of about $600-million, a proposal heads of state rejected.
In the 2005 budget, $75-million is earmarked for peace and security — less than half the $200-million sought for this by the commission.
About $63-million will go to covering the AU’s administrative costs.
Previous AU budgets only covered the organisation’s administrative costs.
The AU, which in 2002 replaced the Organisation of African Unity with much fanfare about becoming a more pro-active body than its much-derided predecessor, has chosen the troubled region of Darfur in western Sudan as a test case for its ambitions.
The Darfur mission, which is mainly geared to monitoring a shaky ceasefire between rebels and the Khartoum government and to protecting the observers, will cost about $222-million for the period October 2004 to October 2005, money mostly provided by Western donors such as the European Union and its member states.
AU member states will finance $63-million of the budget, with the extra $95-million expected to come from discretionary payments by member states and from Western partners, according to Thiam.
”Mr Konare has been given a mandate to seek these extra funds,” said the spokesperson.
Describing the new budget as an ”important stage”, another AU spokesperson, Desmond Orjiako, said: ”Sure, we would have liked more, but we quadrupled the budget. We cannot kill our member states and ask them for more.”
So far, member states have only come up with $26-million of the $43-million in the 2004 budget, according to one AU official who asked not to be named.
The key question now is whether the much bigger budget for 2005 will be adequately financed.
Later on Tuesday, the AU executive council was due to go through the formality of voting on the 2005 budget.
The council is meeting in Addis Ababa, where the AU has its headquarters. — Sapa-AFP