Talks by the Committee of Permanent Representatives of the African Union began in Nouakchott on Monday, ahead of the summit of the continental organization scheduled for July 1-2, 2018.The holding of this session marks the inauguration a brand new Convention Center at the Nouakchott International Conference Center called “El Mourabitoune,” and located outside the city, on the road to the airport.

The two-day agenda includes the review of a number of reports, including that of the joint meeting between the Program and Conferences Subcommittee and the Subcommittee in charge of the coordination and overall supervision of the budget and financial and administrative affairs.

It also includes three reports from the Subcommittee on Multilateral Cooperation, the Subcommittee on Refugees, Returnees and Internally Displaced Persons in Africa and the Subcommittee on Structural Reform.

Permanent Representatives will also discuss the AU Commission’s 2017 reports on gender equality in Africa, the situation in Palestine and the Middle East, the structural and financial implications of the African Space Agency and the humanitarian situation in Africa.

The African Union (AU) Heads of State and Government during their Twenty-Sixth Ordinary Session on 31 January 2016 in Addis Ababa adopted the African Space Policy (ASP) and Strategy as the first of the concrete steps to realize an African Outer Space Programme, as one of the flagship programmes of the AU Agenda 2063. The African Space policy was presented at the Second Ordinary Session for the Specialized Technical Committee Meeting on Education, Science And Technology (Stc-Est) in Cairo Egypt last November.

They will also consider other reports, one from the AU Commission and the African Court of Human Rights, while the others are from the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights, the AU Advisory Council against Corruption and from the African Parliament.

Opening the session, the Permanent Secretary of the Mauritanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, Ahmed Mahmoud Ould Soueid’Ahmed, said the challenges facing Africa “require joint efforts, energies and capacity building, to achieve the noble goals set by the founding fathers of the union.”

The sacrifices of these founding fathers “compel us to continue the path they have cleared for Africans,” he said, pointing out that in recent years, there have been several important milestones, including the advent of the African Continental Free-Trade Area and the Global Reform System with a view to achieving safe and effective means for funding the African Union.

The head of the 36th Session of the PRC, Hope Tumukunde, who is also Rwanda’s ambassador to the AU, hailed the decision of the Heads of State and Government to dedicate the Nouakchott Summit to the fight against corruption, whose struggle is a sustainable process through the establishment of a roadmap to eradicate the scourge in Africa.

She insisted that corruption is the biggest challenge to human development.