The Prime Minister of Ethiopia Dr Abiy Ahmed has extended welcome to ministers of Foreign Affairs and Heads of State and Government of African countries who are taking part in the ongoing African Union meetings in the Capital, Addis Ababa.
The 40th Ordinary Session of the Executive Council (Ministerial Session) kicked off yesterday February 2 and will be concluded this evening. Thereafter, the country will on February 5 and 6, 2022 host the 35th Ordinary Session of the AU Assembly.
This is the first time the leaders are convening physically since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in December 2019.
In a tweet, Dr Abiy who described the convening leaders as “brothers and sisters”, says the country has eagerly been waiting to host them.
“After a two year interruption due to COVID-19, Ethiopia welcomes the resumption of the AU Summit in its capital city Addis Ababa which has been gearing up to warmly receive our fellow brothers and sisters,” says Prime Minister, Dr Abiy Ahmed.
Key on the agenda of the Executive Council session of the African Union is the Financing of the Union and the Scale of Assessment and Contributions for member states, African Candidatures within the International System and the Implementation of Agenda 2063.
Others are the Institutional Reforms, Gender and youth parity and efforts towards ending violence against women and girls, education, science and innovation, updates on the situation in the Pan African Parliament (PAP), the election of members of the AU Peace and Security Council etcetera.
The Ministers also adopted the report of the 43rd Ordinary Session of the Permanent Representatives Committee (PRC) held virtually on 20 and 21 January 2022.
They are also discussings ways of addressing the devastating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the increasing threats of insecurity from conflicts and terrorism, the unconstitutional changes of governments in African states and the socio-economic development on the continent.
Ethiopia has braved the negative propaganda and pressure waged by some western countries against it, tarnishing the image of the country by blowing their trumpet of falsehood attempting to show that Addis Ababa is not a safe place to host the 35th AU Summit of Heads of State and Governments due to security issues.
In fact, for more than a year now, some western countries including the US, where its Embassy in Addis Ababa staged a campaign attempting to isolate Ethiopia from the rest of the world by assuming that terrorist TPLF forces will triumphantly enter Addis Ababa causing major security threat to the international community members and their embassies.
Thanks to the efforts of the country’s security forces and leadership who fought and foiled the orchestrated conspiracy of anti-Ethiopia forces.
Political commentators and journalists covering the events say convening the meetings in Addis Ababa has exposed the propagandists and pited them as enemies of Africa’s unity and progress.
Ahmed Ibrahim, a journalist from Africa24 Media told who is in Ethiopia to cover the African Union Summit for the second time, told the country’s news wire, ENA that many doubted that the African Union Summit will be held in Addis Ababa.
“But now we see that Addis Ababa is a safety city and the people are really very nice and very friendly,” he added.
Ibrahim commended the Government of Ethiopia and the people for their commitment and effort for the success of this summit.
Commenting on the international media he stated that they always have issues and agendas. So it the responsibility of Ethiopian and the African media to produce news from African perspective.
Some of the international media are producing fake news, the journalist noted, adding that it “is our responsibility as journalists to do fact checking before releasing any news on Ethiopia or Africa.”
Furthermore, he stressed that the continent needs to develop and invest on the people.
“If we invest on people we can get education, we can get safety, we can get health care, and build our nation and all African countries.”
According to him, the other main issue facing Africa is security. Thus security issues need to be discussed seriously by African leaders.
“If the African leaders agree to have security issues in this summit, talk about it and solve the problems, I believe nations will find it very easy to cope with that idea.”
Moreover, the journalist pointed out that the continent has immense natural resources and using all these resources together as nations can be beneficial.
Ibrahim plans to visit other parts of Ethiopia after covering summit.
“I have a plan to visit cities like Bahir Dar, Gondar or other areas in Ethiopia. So, hopefully we can go around and visit more areas in Ethiopia after the meeting.”