Public Sector

Commission for Africa: Growth and Investment Strategy

The Commission for Africa was launched by Tony Blair in early 2004 to address the role the international community can play in Africa’s development. It was established to coincide with the UK’s parallel presidencies of the EU and the G8, which would provide two strong platforms for promoting the Commission’s findings among the international community.

The Commission consisted of international members but with a majority from Africa, which included one president, two prime ministers, and another 14 ministers, senators and prominent public figures with an interest in Africa’s future.

The Commission set three goals:

To challenge the negative perceptions of Africa
To identify and communicate how to support Africa’s development both internally and by the international community
To persuade governments to act on the Commission’s recommendations

Challenge
Critical to the success of the Commission was solid analysis, a final report containing clear and practical recommendations, and engagement of key stakeholders within and outside Africa to help ensure that the recommendations would be adopted.

Approach
A.T. Kearney worked with the Commission to analyze and draft recommendations in the growth and investment area – producing a series of well-received recommendations, including the establishment of the Investment Climate Facility for Africa.

In addition, we provided a facilitating link between the Commission and a number of key stakeholders, including NEPAD, APRM and the Nelson Mandela Foundation to ensure that important institutional stakeholders "bought in" to the recommendations as they were being developed.

Results
The Commission’s recommendations are well-placed to succeed where previous initiatives have failed. This success is largely because the recommendations are written from the perspective of an engaged partnership between Africa and the developed world, and approached as a coherent package, recognizing that many of the issues are interlocking and must be tackled together.