First Continental Report Charts Agenda 2063 Progress After a Decade

The African Union released the First Continental Report on the Implementation of Agenda 2063 in February 2024, providing the first comprehensive stocktake of what the continent achieved, and did not achieve, during the First Ten Year Implementation Plan, which ran from 2014 to 2023. The report was presented to the AU Assembly at its 37th Ordinary Session in Addis Ababa and represents the most detailed evidence base ever assembled on continental implementation of a long-term development agenda.

The headline finding is an overall continental implementation score of approximately 62 percent of the first-decade targets. That result reflects a genuinely mixed picture. The continent made its strongest gains in macroeconomic management, mobile and digital connectivity, energy access, and the formal operationalisation of key continental institutions. The African Continental Free Trade Area entered into force, trading began, and a growing number of countries ratified and began implementing its protocols. The African Monetary Fund legal instruments were adopted, a step toward the continental financial architecture envisioned in Agenda 2063.

Performance was weaker in peace and security, where the persistence of armed conflict in the Sahel, the Great Lakes region, and the Horn of Africa held back continental scores. Social development indicators, including poverty reduction, maternal health, and food security, were significantly disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, which reversed several years of gains in the middle of the decade. Gender equality indicators showed positive direction but remained well below the pace needed to meet the 2033 targets.

The report drew on data submitted by 54 member states and eight Regional Economic Communities, though data gaps and inconsistencies in national statistical systems were acknowledged as a structural challenge. AUDA-NEPAD officials noted that improving data quality is itself a Decade of Acceleration priority, and that the lessons from the first continental report have been built directly into the monitoring and evaluation architecture of the Second Ten Year Implementation Plan, including a clearer baseline, more frequent reporting checkpoints, and a scheduled mid-term evaluation in 2028.