Ethiopian Review

Yonas Abiye

Addis Abeba , (All Africa)— The design for the 20-million-Euro building of the Peace and Security of the African Union (AU) to be financed by the German government was made public at an exhibition on Thursday.

The German government had agreed earlier to finance the construction of the new building at the AU Commission’s Head Quarters in Addis Ababa.

The new building will be put up on the grounds of the AU offices and adjacent to the AU’s new Conference Center.

The exhibition at the German House here was jointly inaugurated by German Federal Foreign Office State Secretary Peter Ammon and AU’s Peace and Security Commissioner Ramtane Lamamra in the presence of higher officials of both sides.

Opening the exhibition, Ammon attributed the declining number of armed conflicts in recent years to the continental body and added the AUC was at the forefront of all that was being done on the continent’s peace and security issues.

“The intention is not just to ensure that an expanding Department with ever growing responsibilities has the office space it needs but also to provide a strategic management capability for AU’s peacekeeping mission,” he added.

These premises is said to enable the AU to play a greater role throughout the continent in the areas of crisis prevention, peacemaking and peacekeeping.

According to the information obtained from GTZ, a German-based capacity building program commissioned by the German Federal Foreign Office for the development and execution of the AU Peace and Security project, 17 architects were invited to participate for the design works of the new building in what it said was an open and transparent architectural competition in Berlin.

The modern and representative Peace and Security Building will be environmentally friendly and energy efficient, it was said at then exhibition.

It will comprise approximately 11.500 square meter gross floor area (GFA) and offers approximately 370 new jobs.

The Daily Monitor has however learnt that the construction project of the building under discussion is planned to be carried out by local construction companies.

But no bid announcement has so far been announced concerning the same.