The African Union will commemorate the 2015 Africa Public Service Day (APSD) on 19-23 June 2015 with special focus on the role of public services in women empowerment and its expected impacts on African Development Agenda 2063.

This commemoration comes in the backdrop of the fact that Africa, the second – largest and second most-populated continent, with 1.1 billion consumers at 2013, has greater potential but has not reached its full productive capacity. The continent is home to two thirds of the world’s least developed countries. It is ranked the lowest of all continents on the UNDP’s Human Development Index.  On the global ranking of World Class universities, only two African countries—South Africa and Egypt feature.  On Innovation: Only three African countries (Mauritius, Seychelles and South Africa) featured in the 2014 Global Innovation Index by Cornell University, INSEAD and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).  A whopping 97% of the African Union budget is donor funded.

As the continent celebrates the 2015 Africa Public Service Day, it must critique the gains made from the celebration of the day in Namibia (2007), Tanzania (2009 and 2011), and Ghana (2013). It must also focus on productivity and productivity enablers such as electricity, good road network, good health system, good education and good communication system. Until we have new Africans with new mindset of producing rather than consuming, we cannot have productive Africans for Africa.