1^st October 2022
Nairob

Dear DG, Directors and colleagues

1. I wish to extend a warm welcome to the new Senior Management colleagues, Directors who joined the African Union Commission family of recent.
2. Allow me in a special way to extend a warm welcome to our friends from Members States who are here with us.
3. Good morning to you all. I am pleased to be with you here today, in this leafy, beautiful city of Nairobi.
4. I am sorry that I could not join you from day-1, due to prior scheduled engagements.
5. Let me start by commending you, DG for the good idea of having this retreat so that as Management team we can come together, looking ourselves in the mirror and like what we like and dislike what we dislike and agree on how to move forward.
6. I would also like to appreciate and thank you all for the planning and preparations you have made to ensure that the learnings that will inform our next steps are drawn from your rich and instructive perspectives.
7. This retreat is also a continuation of the reflection and thinking that took place in Mombasa last year, with some of you especially from the side of support services, looking how we could take forward that Vision of Being Results Oriented, Service Delivery, Efficiency, Teamwork so that we can achieve and deliver impact together.
8. The pledge that I have made to Member States who elected me to this office is that I am going to do my utmost best to make sure this Organization is run effectively, efficiently, being transparent, upholding rules and regulations while keeping ourselves accountable.
9. I committed to ensure the intergovernmental process is smooth and that the decisions are effectively implemented with a sense of urgency!
10. That time I was looking at the Organization from the outside, now I know it from the inside. I know how much challenges we are facing and how much change has to happen.
11. I know that you have a huge potential to get us there. When I look at you and what you have accomplished and the set of talents, skills and energy we have in you as a team, I have no doubt that we will get there.
12. We have come a long way because this Organization is turning 20 years after the OUA and a lot has been achieved. 
13. Sometimes we focus on where gaps are -- because it is where our business should be -- and forget to bring up the positive things that we also need to appreciate as they keep us energized and motivated!
14. For instance, we have had a new Commission that is gender-balanced, 50/50, in the Leadership. We have had Commissioners voted in through a competitive process based on their technical competences. And that culture is coming down to the next layers of management. It is really something worth being appreciated.
15. We have had the R10 helping us to clean and streamline the recruitment processes. We are now working to co-create a pathway to implement the Skills Audit and Competency Assessment (SACA).
16. My message today, is one of Paradigm shift towards a results-driven culture. As Executive Members of our Organization, we have to plan, to think, to bring proposals on the table, to execute our plans, and to report our performance at all layers of accountability.
17. One of AU’s Core Reform areas, points to the need for the Union’s ‘Business’ to be managed efficiently and effectively at both the political and operational levels.
18. These twin words - efficiency and effectiveness are particularly crucial to embrace during these turbulent times of global and continental adversities, resulting from pandemics, wars, coups, climate change and so on.
19. This means that to become relevant to the daily lives of African citizens across the continent, the AU should become more effective by focusing on impact and result based objectives rather than simply undertaking multitude of activities.
20. And by becoming more efficient, the Commission will better serve its immediate stakeholders, chiefly our Member States. Efficiency means things such as value for money, timely and quality execution.
21. But efficiency has to be bounded and guided by the attainment of an end result. It is not to be pursued for the sake of it.
22. Our level of readiness, agility, integration and adaptation to the continually changing environment will depend on the extent to which we efficiently and effectively plan, implement, report, and monitor our performance against realistic short- and long-term strategic objectives – and by making better use of our limited resources, both financial and human resources, and yes, time! We need to dedicate adequate time to implementing priority actions. Four of these I wish to highlight:
23. (1) The Special Project- To plan ahead, we need to look back. For this reason, the Commission has the lead role in driving the Special Project on the evaluation of the first 10-year implementation plan of agenda 2063 as well as the formulation of the 2nd 10-year implementation plan.
24. No doubt, we will draw important insights from the evaluation of the first 10-year plan to inform our decisions to formulate the 2nd 10-year implementation plan as well as the MTPs and the Annual Budget Plan.
25. We committed to delivering on these two important pieces of work to the Summit of Heads of State and Government of February 2023 with in mind that these reports will guide us as we embark on Results-Based Budgeting and Performance Management, starting with the 2024 Budget, of which the preparatory process was to start in September 2022 with a Budget Framework Paper that is informed by the preliminary findings of the Special Project. Obviously, we have registered a delay on this.
26. This calls for collective collaboration and inputs to this special project. I, therefore, urge you all to provide the necessary data, information, reports and so on that the project team will need.
27. (2) Monitoring Policy Organs Decisions- Another important project that will also help us with our efforts to become an efficient and effective organization is that of Monitoring, evaluating, and reporting on 10-years of African Union policy organs’ decisions. By understanding the extent to which and how the previous decisions have been implemented as well as evaluating the impact and results delivered through these decisions, we will be able to better plan the future work of our organization.
28. Once again, I call on you and your teams to contribute to this process by providing detailed and accurate input as well as, achievable, realistic recommendations for overcoming the obstacles and addressing the challenges.
29. (3) Audit Recommendations- Yet another pressing task I need to recall, is the Implementation of Audit recommendations. More specifically, we must do all it takes, including fast-tracking catch-up plans over the next few weeks to ensure the deadline of December 2022 to have fully implemented all the recommendations that came out of the Forensic Audit, is met.
30. (4) Streamlining our working methods and ways of engaging with Stakeholders- Planning without action is futile. And action without working methods creates chaos and wastefulness.
31. To improve our system wide management processes and actions, our methods of work need to integrate the feedback and lessons learned from earlier experiences.
32. We can as a Commission become efficient and effective by embedding in our management processes uniform methods and tools such as Standard Operating Procedures, Service Level Agreements, Dashboards and so on, to deal with both our strategic and daily tasks.
33. By so doing, recurrent problems, especially those relating to budget processes will become responsive to the feedback that it receives from the auditing circles.
34. It is, therefore, important that as a Commission, we continually enhance our methods of work by developing an institutional memory that can retain the knowledge and experience of earlier generations of management as well as continue to be enriched by current practices.
35. This will for example, require a revamp of our Document Management system in a way that retrieval of archived information as well as the documentation of current work processes are made complete, relevant, and easy to use. Indicators to measure performance, incentives and sanctions will also help to ensure sustainability and self-correcting methods of work.
36. Another area we need to focus on in our methods of work is managing relations with Member States and other stakeholders. This necessitate anticipating what the expectations are and being ahead of the curve in implementing best practices and effectively delivering on our mandate.
37. I look forward to the recommendations of this retreat on these issues and emphasize once again, that the objective should be to make both the Union and the Commission more efficient and effective.
38. I thank you for your kind attention. 

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