ADSR Experts

Secretary-General, Mr. Michael W. Lodge, and ADSR Experts Ms. Judith Owusu (left) and Ms. Tini Guitoba (right)

Overview

At the 2017 UN Ocean Conference, ISA in cooperation with the African Mineral Development Centre (AMDC) of the UN Economic Commission for Africa (since transferred to the African Union) registered a joint Voluntary Commitment to foster international and regional cooperation in support of the sustainable development of Africa’s Blue Economy (#OceanAction16374). 

The ADSR project then received the support of the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD) which pledged $ 500,000. 

Implementation 

The ADSR project is implemented by ISA and the African Union. All activities are undertaken in close cooperation with State Parties to UNCLOS, relevant international and regional organizations, the scientific community and academia. 

Content 

A key component of the ADSR project lies in the organization of five workshops, one in each African region. The ADSR project started with the organization of a workshop in October 2018, in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, which brought together representatives of francophone African countries (Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Guinea, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Togo)  as well as international and regional organizations, the scientific community and academia. 

The official launching of the ADSR project occurred at a high-level side event organized by ISA in partnership with AMDC on the side-lines of the Sustainable Blue Economy Conference, held in Nairobi in November 2018. 

A few months later, in May 2019, a second workshop was organized in partnership with the Government of South Africa and the African Union in Pretoria. The Pretoria workshop provided the opportunity for 40 government representatives from Angola, Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Liberia, Malawi, South Africa and Zambia to attend and participate. Representatives of ISA, including members of the LTC, also attended, as well as those of the African Union (AU), the Office of Legal Affairs of the Division for Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Sea of the United Nations Secretariat (DOALOS) and the Kingdom of Norway. Also, several experts from Africa were also in attendance. 

ADSR Experts

Another essential key of the ADSR project relates to the deployment of 10 national experts, including five women, from African States within the Secretariat of ISA in the course of 2020. The main objective of such secondments is two-fold. First, to build on existing capacity-building initiatives to provide national experts with technical skills on deep-seabed related matters. Second, to enable the ISA Secretariat to benefit from the contribution of such experts with a view of advancing specific tasks identified in partnership with the Legal and Technical Commission (LTC).  

For 2020, of more than 50 applications received, the following experts have been selected: