African Union warned it faces donor fatigue as mission reviews budget

Thursday March 2, 2017

By Chris Mgidu NAIROBI (Xinhua) -- Senior African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) officials met in Nairobi on Tuesday to review its activities and draw up a budget that will guide the operations of the mission in 2017.

The five-day conference which has drawn participants from the African Union (AU) will come up with a detailed plan and budget.

The Special Representative of the AU Commission Chairperson (SRCC) for Somalia Francisco Madeira said the meeting will go a long way in helping the mission achieve its objectives.

“This is where we are going to plan in detail what each of our units and clusters is going to do or intends to do in the years to come,” he said in a statement issued in Nairobi.

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Madeira said the pan-African body’s mission is finding it increasingly difficult to fund a number of programs, owing to what he called donor fatigue.

“Not all project plans could be implemented, either because we dreamt so much and thought we could do everything and thus lost so much sight or we trusted our partners so much that we thought they would fund everything,” he said.

Madeira, who is also the head of the mission, noted that it is time the donors considered themselves as partners in resolving the crisis in Somalia.

“Donors think stabilizing Somalia is a task of the African Union so they get fatigued. Donor fatigue shouldn’t arise. It’s the duty of all of us to make Somalia a functional state. Let’s be partners,” he said.

Among issues being discussed at the Nairobi meeting include support for political processes, security sector, stabilization and recovery, protection of human rights and gender process.

Also on the table is how AMISOM should facilitate access to recovered areas and secure main supply routes. Madeira said AMISOM was forced to devise austerity measures to cope up with the low funding.

The new Somali government has developed a National Development Plan 2017-2020 but the country still faces challenges in combating negative clannism, solidifying the rule of law and human rights, countering violent extremism, and engendering the rights of women and girls.

AMISOM Force Chief of Plans Salifu Yakubu painted a security atmosphere that is fluid, largely due to the unpredictability of the situation.

Al-Shabaab, he noted, has been weakened but still has the capacity to attack. This militia “remains resilient” and has resorted to asymmetric warfare.

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