Kenya to Host 9th ACP Summit of Heads of State and Government in December 2019

Brussels, 08 August 2019: The Secretariat of the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) Group of States has announced that the 9^th ACP Summit of Heads of State and Government will take place from 9 to 10 December 2019 in Nairobi, Kenya. The Summit is themed “A Transformed ACP: Committed to Multilateralism” and will be preceded by Ministerial Sessions from 6 to 8 December at the same venue.

The Summit comes at an auspicious time for the ACP Group as it prepares to finalise the Post-Cotonou negotiations as well as the revision to its Constitutive Act, the Georgetown Agreement. At the 110^th Session of the ACP Council of Ministers which will precede the Summit, Ministers will appoint the next Secretary General for the term 2020 to 2025. The tenure of the current Senior Management Team expires on 28 February 2020.

Preparations for the summit are spearheaded by a Working Group composed of Ambassadors Daniel Dede of Central African Republic and Daniel Evina Abe’e of Cameroon (Central Africa); Grum Teshome Abay of Ethiopia and Omar Abdi Said of Djibouti (East Africa); Georges Chikoti of Angola and  Kaire M. Mbuende of Namibia (Southern Africa); Teneng Mba Jaiteh of The Gambia and  Abou Dosso of Côte d’Ivoire (West Africa); Maria O’Brien of The Bahamas and Sieglien Burleson of Suriname (Caribbean); Deo Saran of Fiji and Aunese Makol Simati of Tuvalu (Pacific).

The Working Group is chaired by Ambassador Jacob T. Kaimenyi of the host country, Kenya.

ACP Secretary General, Dr. Patrick I. Gomes underscored the crucial importance of this 9^th Summit, terming it: “A decisive opportunity to secure the ACP leadership’s endorsement, in principle, of the Post-Cotonou Agreement, with a view to its signing in early 2020. Substantive issues are tabled for discussion at the Ministerial meetings; and we look forward to exploring how we can advance the commitment to multilateralism by the ACP Heads of State & Government  to achieve the UN 2030 Agenda, and so meet current and future needs of citizens across the Africa, the Caribbean and Pacific regions.”

ACP Summits take place on average, every three years in an ACP Member State. They give ACP leaders from the 79-member ACP Group an opportunity to review the major developments of interest and concern to its members on the international scene in general, and in ACP States in particular. The Leaders will define the main orientations of the ACP Group’s general policy for the coming years and provide the Council of Ministers with appropriate directives for its implementation. In addition, the Summit will take stock of the Group’s cooperation with the European Union, its key development partner.

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About ACP Summits

The first ACP Summit of Heads of State and Government was held in Libreville, Gabon, on 6 and 7 November 1997, during which the ACP Leaders undertook to meet on a regular basis. Consequently, ACP Heads of State and Government have met every two years on average, in Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic) on 25 and 26 November 1999; in Nadi (Fiji) on 18 and 19 July 2002; in Maputo (Mozambique) on 23 and 24 June 2004; in Khartoum (Sudan) on 7 and 8 December 2006; and in Accra (Ghana) on 2 and 3 October 2008; Equatorial Guinea (Malabo) 13 and 14 December 2012; Papua New Guinea (Port Moresby) 31 May to 1 June 2016.

The African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States (ACP) is an organization created by the Georgetown Agreement in 1975. The ACP Group’s main goals centre around the sustainable development of its Member-States and their gradual integration into the global economy; coordination of the activities of the ACP Group in the framework of the implementation of the ACP-EU Partnership Agreements; consolidation of unity and solidarity among ACP states and establishing and consolidating peace and stability in a free and democratic society.