COMESA Summit Takes Place on 23 November

The 21st COMESA Heads of State and Government Summit will take place on 23 November 2021. Consequently, a new Summit theme has been developed to rally Member States on the focus area in the implementation of regional integration programmes.

The Summit will be hosted by the Government of Egypt and comes three years since the last one held in Lusaka, Zambia in July 2018.

The theme is: “Building Resilience Through Strategic Digital Economic Integration,” and was motivated by the emerging regional and global economic and trade dynamics which have impacted heavily on the COMESA regional integration agenda, such as the COVID-19 Pandemic. It is expected to rally Member States on how to safeguard and advance the COMESA regional integration agenda using digital platforms given the uncertain nature of shocks.

At the forthcoming Summit, the President of Egypt, H.E Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, will take over the chair of the COMESA Heads of State and Government (also known as the Authority) from the outgoing chair, H.E Andry Rajoelina, President of Madagascar.

The 21st Summit will be conducted in both physical and virtual formats and will be preceded by two policy organs meetings: the 42 Meeting of the Council of Ministers and the 42 Intergovernmental Committee.

The Council will meet on 9 – 10 November 2021 to make decisions on various recommendations presented by the Intergovernmental Committee (IC) on the way forward in implementation of COMESA integration programmes. The IC will meet on 2 – 4 November 2021.

The IC comprises of Permanent/Principal Secretaries responsible for the development of programmes and action plans in all fields of co-operation except in the finance and monetary sector. It will review progress reports presented by various sectoral committees and COMESA institutions and make recommendations to the Council of Ministers for decision-making.

The Summit theme was jointly developed by the government of Egypt and the COMESA Secretariat.

This post is also available in: العربية (Arabic)

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