Starting from 16th-18th January 2023 Africa Union Commission organized A RECs CEOs retreat, coordination committee and strategic partners exerts meeting in Nairobi, Kenya in which a representative from the Africa Leather and Leather Products Institute by the Name Mr. Kiraye Michael gave a presentation on “Inter-REC cooperation using Leather Sector as a concrete intervention”.
The presentation highlighted the mapping of the leather sector across RECs, industrialization needs of the leather sector, key indicators, and concrete steps for the development of the leather industry in Africa by building common physical and institutional infrastructure starting with establishing centers of excellence in 8 RECs, leather value chain Trade map portal and leather business directory.
The presentation underscored the need for inter-RECs collaboration to create regional value chains in the leather sector to accelerate sustainable industrialization and concluded by underlining policy recommendations and key indicators aimed at harnessing inter-RECs cooperation through a common strategy in the leather and leather sectors for industrialization.
Concerning promotion of inter-RECs cooperation using the leather sector development programme, the meeting of the coordination committee experts welcomed the presentation and requested that AU-IBAR be brought on board for AU institutional structure alignment.
In addition, the initiative will Enhance inter-RECs collaboration in the development of regional value chains such as the leather value chain as a means to accelerate Africa’s industrialization. On the specific case of the leather value chain, it was recommended that the initiative be developed in conjunction with AU-IBAR to pass through AU institutional structures for a final decision to be made for the way forward.
Further, ALLPI and COMESA were recommended to liaise with AU-IBAR to make the proposal of the initiative to be submitted to AUC for further action.
