With its programme portfolio expanding from $30m to more than $300m in just four years, AUDA-NEPAD is positioning itself as the African Union’s premier delivery agency. CEO Nardos Bekele-Thomas believes Africa’s greatest challenge is no longer defining its development ambitions but building the institutions, partnerships and investment pipelines capable of turning Agenda 2063 into reality.
A frica has never been short of vision. From the Lagos Plan of Action to the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), and more recently Agenda 2063 and the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), the continent has produced no shortage of ambitious frameworks to guide its economic transformation. The real test has always come afterwards. Turning continental aspirations into roads, power systems, industrial parks, digital infrastructure, healthcare, jobs and investment has proved considerably more difficult.
That implementation gap is one of the defining development challenges facing Africa today. It is also the challenge that AUDA-NEPAD believes it is uniquely positioned to address.
Speaking to development partners during the African Union Executive Council meetings in Addis Ababa, AUDA-NEPAD CEO Nardos Bekele-Thomas presented an institution that has quietly undergone one of the most significant transformations within the African Union system.
Her message was less about celebrating organisational growth than explaining why Africa now needs stronger delivery institutions if Agenda 2063 is to become more than a collection of well-crafted strategies.
“We know what to do,” Bekele-Thomas told partners. “The task now is converting that alignment into structural transformation, productive jobs, resilient food systems, environmental sustainability and the domestic financing that will allow Africa to stand increasingly on its own resources.”
It was a simple observation, but one that captures a broader shift taking place across Africa’s development architecture. Increasingly, success will be measured not by the quality of policy documents but by the institutions capable of implementing them.
An agency with a growing mandate
Unlike many continental organisations that focus primarily on policy development or advocacy, AUDA-NEPAD occupies an unusual position within the African Union.
As the Union’s development agency, it is mandated to coordinate and implement regional and continental programmes, strengthen the capacity of member states, develop innovative financing approaches and monitor progress towards Agenda 2063.
Few institutions combine policy development, programme implementation and financing under one roof, and fewer still operate across all 55 African Union member states.
Its governance structure reflects that importance. AUDA-NEPAD reports to the Heads of State and Government Orientation Committee, bringing together 33 African leaders and the chairpersons of the Regional Economic Communities. For Bekele-Thomas, this places the agency firmly at the centre of Africa’s development architecture rather than on its periphery.
“When you partner with us,” she noted, “you are partnering with an instrument that Africa’s own Heads of State have chosen to place at the heart of their development architecture.”
That institutional authority has become increasingly significant as African governments seek practical support in implementing continental priorities.
A decade’s growth in four years
Perhaps the clearest indication of AUDA-NEPAD’s changing role lies in its expansion.
Four years ago, the agency managed a programme portfolio worth around $30m. Today that portfolio exceeds $300m, representing more than tenfold growth. During the past year alone, programmes were implemented across every African Union member state and all eight Regional Economic Communities, while fourteen governments formally requested that AUDA-NEPAD establish national offices within their countries.
Those figures represent more than institutional growth. They suggest that governments increasingly see AUDA-NEPAD as an implementation partner capable of translating continental commitments into national programmes.
The ambition now is considerably larger. Bekele-Thomas wants the agency to become a $1bn delivery organisation by 2029. Importantly, she insists that the figure is not about institutional prestige.
Instead, it reflects the scale of implementation that Africa’s own development agenda now demands.
“It is a proxy for the scale of delivery capacity Africa’s own development agenda now requires of us,” she said, describing the target as a measure of the programme portfolio the institution hopes to manage on behalf of the continent within the next four years.
That ambition has been underpinned by a broad coalition of development partners, ranging from the European Union and Germany to Japan, Belgium, New Zealand, the African Development Bank, the World Bank, Afreximbank, philanthropic foundations and several bilateral donors.
Rather than simply funding individual projects, Bekele-Thomas argues that these partnerships have helped transform AUDA-NEPAD into an institution capable of operating at continental scale.
Agenda 2063 reaches a critical moment
The agency’s new strategy arrives at a pivotal stage in the implementation of Agenda 2063.
The first Biennial Review of the Second Ten-Year Implementation Plan provides the clearest assessment yet of how Africa is progressing towards its long-term development ambitions.
The overall score stands at 53%. While that figure suggests meaningful progress, it also illustrates how much work remains.
The review found that public institutions are becoming more responsive, scoring 64%, while citizens are becoming more empowered and productive, achieving 63%. Progress towards middle-income status reached 60%, reflecting improvements in poverty reduction and access to basic services.
The more sobering findings lie elsewhere. Regional integration and connectivity scored just 35%, highlighting the continuing gap between political commitments and practical implementation. Africa’s capacity to resolve conflicts peacefully stood at 37%, while the continent’s ability to finance its own development reached only 41%, underscoring continued dependence on external resources and relatively weak domestic revenue mobilisation.
For Bekele-Thomas, these figures reveal an uncomfortable reality. Africa’s strategic vision has advanced faster than its capacity to deliver it. That is precisely where she believes AUDA-NEPAD must play a more prominent role.
Rather than acting as an observer of the continent’s progress, the agency intends to become one of the principal mechanisms through which the implementation gap is closed.
Its recently adopted 2025-2029 Strategy has therefore been designed not simply as another planning document, but as an operational blueprint linking Africa’s development priorities with practical delivery mechanisms.
Organised around five strategic result areas and five delivery pathways, the strategy recognises the scale of Africa’s financing challenge, estimated at $3.3trn, and the need for much larger, more innovative partnerships to bridge that gap.
Beyond aid to investment
If there was one theme that ran consistently through Bekele-Thomas’s address, it was that Africa’s development financing model must evolve.
For decades, grants and concessional finance have underpinned much of the continent’s development agenda. They have funded infrastructure, strengthened institutions and supported countless programmes across health, agriculture and education.
Bekele-Thomas was careful to acknowledge that contribution, noting that many of AUDA-NEPAD’s own achievements would not have been possible without long-standing development partners.
Yet she argued that Africa has reached a point where grants alone can no longer provide the scale of capital required.
With the continent’s development financing gap estimated at $3.3trn, a different approach is required, one that combines public finance, development finance institutions, commercial capital and private investors within a single investment ecosystem.
“Our orientation,” she said, “must shift from an Africa that receives concessional support towards an Africa that is genuinely ripe for global investment.”
This represents more than a change in funding sources. It requires a fundamental rethink of the role played by development institutions.
Rather than simply administering donor-funded programmes, AUDA-NEPAD increasingly sees itself as a market maker, preparing projects, reducing investment risk and building the institutional confidence that encourages long-term capital to invest in Africa.
Project preparation, feasibility studies, governance structures and regulatory certainty may lack the visibility of new roads or power stations, but they often determine whether investment reaches a project in the first place.
That philosophy sits behind the proposed Agenda 2063 Development Fund and AUDA-NEPAD’s growing collaboration with the Alliance of African Multilateral Financial Institutions (AAMFI). Both initiatives seek to strengthen Africa’s capacity to prepare investment-ready projects before they are presented to financiers.
The objective is simple. Rather than approaching investors with a catalogue of aspirations, Africa should present a pipeline of credible, bankable opportunities that can move rapidly towards implementation.
Building a continental project pipeline
That thinking is already shaping AUDA-NEPAD’s operations.
The agency currently manages a live pipeline of 50 projects spread across five strategic result areas, with around 85% operating at continental or regional level. Together they span infrastructure, industrialisation, agriculture, the blue economy, healthcare, skills development and institutional governance.
Unlike traditional project lists assembled around donor priorities, Bekele-Thomas emphasised that every initiative has passed through the agency’s Programme Board and institutional assessment process before being presented to partners.
The projects are at different stages of maturity, progressing from concept through appraisal and due diligence towards financing and implementation. While additional technical work remains for some, the emphasis is on presenting partners with projects that have already undergone a structured review.
The challenge, however, remains financing. Currently, only around one in five projects has secured confirmed funding. Many others remain under discussion with potential partners, while several are still seeking appropriate financing structures.
The composition of that financing is also beginning to change. Although grants and technical assistance still dominate, blended finance now features in around one third of the project portfolio. By combining concessional funding with commercial investment, AUDA-NEPAD hopes to use relatively modest public resources to mobilise significantly larger pools of private capital.
Infrastructure and industrialisation account for the largest number of projects, reflecting Africa’s continued emphasis on manufacturing, regional value chains and transport connectivity.
Agriculture, food systems and the blue economy account for the largest share of financing requirements, while health, skills development and governance remain comparatively underfunded despite growing demand.
Bekele-Thomas’s appeal to development partners was therefore notably different from the traditional donor pitch.
“We are not asking you to fund an idea,” she said. “We are asking you to help us complete a pipeline that has already been shaped, tested and governed.”
That distinction reflects AUDA-NEPAD’s broader effort to position itself as a trusted implementation platform, rather than simply another funding recipient.
A changing partnership landscape
The evolution of AUDA-NEPAD’s financing model is also reflected in its approach to partnerships.
Traditional partners remain central to the agency’s work, including the European Union, Germany, Japan, Belgium, Sweden, Spain, the African Development Bank, the World Bank, Afreximbank and a growing number of philanthropic organisations. Their support has helped build both programme capacity and institutional credibility over many years.
At the same time, Bekele-Thomas made clear that the agency is actively broadening its international relationships.
China features prominently in that strategy. Recent discussions with the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the China Development Bank and the China International Development Cooperation Agency focused not only on infrastructure finance but also on expanding Africa’s manufacturing capacity and making greater use of China’s zero tariff policy for African exports.
Rather than replacing existing partners, the objective is diversification. A broader financing base gives AUDA-NEPAD greater resilience while providing governments with access to a wider range of expertise, financing instruments and investment opportunities.
For Bekele-Thomas, successful partnerships also share common characteristics. They are driven by African priorities rather than externally designed programmes. They connect financing directly to implementation and judge success by measurable development outcomes rather than spending targets.
Credibility as a competitive advantage
As AUDA-NEPAD seeks to manage increasingly large programmes, institutional credibility becomes as important as financial ambition.
Bekele-Thomas devoted considerable attention to governance and accountability, recognising that investors and development partners require confidence in the institutions managing their resources.
The agency has maintained budget execution above 90% for four consecutive years and has consistently received unqualified audits. It also remains, according to Bekele-Thomas, the only African Union institution to have completed the European Union’s rigorous Nine Pillar Assessment, an internationally recognised validation of financial management and operational systems.
These achievements are not presented simply as administrative milestones. They are intended to demonstrate that AUDA-NEPAD possesses the governance standards required to manage increasingly sophisticated financing structures, including blended finance and large-scale investment partnerships.
The agency is continuing to strengthen those capabilities through organisational reform, enhanced digital systems and expanded technical expertise. Support from Germany’s GIZ is helping modernise institutional processes, while Afreximbank has embedded specialist advisers across several directorates to strengthen sector expertise.
Looking ahead, Bekele-Thomas identified two priorities that will shape the agency’s next phase of development. The first is expanding AUDA-NEPAD’s physical presence within member states, responding to requests from governments for stronger implementation support closer to national institutions. The second is accelerating digitalisation, enabling better project management, stronger monitoring and real-time reporting for both governments and development partners.
Closing Africa’s implementation gap
AUDA-NEPAD’s ambitions ultimately extend well beyond institutional expansion. The agency sees itself as one of the principal instruments through which Africa can close the gap between continental vision and practical delivery.
That ambition comes at a time when expectations of African institutions are changing. Governments increasingly want organisations capable not only of producing policy advice but also of mobilising investment, managing complex projects and delivering measurable outcomes.
For the private sector, that evolution is equally significant. As Africa seeks to accelerate industrialisation, strengthen regional value chains, modernise agriculture and expand healthcare systems, implementation capacity will become an increasingly valuable asset.
Investors require credible pipelines, predictable governance and institutions capable of translating political commitments into commercially viable projects.
AUDA-NEPAD is positioning itself to become precisely such an institution. Its ambition to manage a $1bn programme portfolio by 2029 is therefore not simply a measure of organisational growth. It is an expression of the scale of implementation that Africa believes will be necessary to achieve the aspirations of Agenda 2063.
Whether that ambition is realised will depend on far more than the agency itself. It will require continued political commitment, stronger domestic resource mobilisation, deeper partnerships with development finance institutions and a greater willingness from private investors to view Africa not as a destination for aid but as a long-term investment opportunity.
If Bekele-Thomas’s vision is realised, AUDA-NEPAD’s greatest contribution may not be the programmes it manages, but the confidence it helps build in Africa’s ability to finance, implement and ultimately deliver its own development agenda.
The post From vision to delivery: AUDA-NEPAD’s billion-dollar ambition appeared first on New African Magazine .
From vision to delivery: AUDA-NEPAD’s billion-dollar ambition
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