APU participants in a group photo in front of Rwanda Parliament building
The 77th Session of the Executive Committee of the African Parliamentary Union (APU) has opened in Kigali with post-COVID-19 recovery, security, and democratic governance topping the agenda.
The two-day session was officially opened this March 10, 2022 by the APU Executive Committee Chairperson, Mohamed Ali Houmed, the Speaker of Djibouti National Assembly and attended by over 120 lawmakers from different African countries.
Ali Houmed said that with the current issues on the continent such as global warming, terrorism, unordered migration, the COVID-19 pandemic and poverty, the voice of APU will be vital in changing the status quo.
For instance, Houmed said in the case today there are many questions to ask in terms of democracy, where we are witnessing the resurgence of military coups, particularly in Western Africa.
Houmed asked if it is an epiphenomenon, a questioning of the concept of democracy “as we have always understood it or a response to the distress of the populations linked to bad governance and the management of the security crisis that several countries on the continent are going through?”
“The numerous and legitimate questions invite us to devote to this current issue all the attention it deserves. In this perspective, I will propose that a conference be organized in a member country of the APU on “the crisis of democracy in Africa,” Houmed said.
“It will be an opportunity to deepen the analysis of this phenomenon to better understand it and provide the solutions that we deem appropriate.”
Houmed revealed that Members of the UPA have zero tolerance to gender-based violence and have decided to devote the next UPA conference to these burning and worrying questions.
Host Speaker Donatille Mukabalisa said that Rwanda is proud to have the APU meeting despite the COVID-19 pandemic which has at the moment been subdued across the continent due to efforts put in place to combat the pandemic.
“It is therefore in a post-covid 19 context that our meeting is taking place, and we will not fail to seize this opportunity to discuss as Parliamentarians the path to take to revive our economies and our health systems and the resumption of life in general,” Mukabalisa said.
Mukabalisa said that such a high-level parliamentary meeting is an ideal setting to look back critically, to learn from the past, to reformulate the future Africans want now and for the generations to come.
Ghanian MP Stephen Amoah said that the only way to solve Africa’s issues of insecurity, conflicts is to have democratic governance which focuses on creating jobs for everyone using the available and shared natural resources.
