GERDDES AFRIQUE : Groupe d'Études et de Recherches sur la Démocratie et le Développement Economique et Social - Groupe d'Études et de Recherches sur la Démocratie et le Développement Economique et Social

NOTE PRESENTATION OF GERDDES-AFRIQUE-CIRD

GERDDES-Africa (Group; Studies and of Research on the Democracy and Economic development and Social) is a COInG Panafrican not partisane created in 1990 by executives and intellectual African different backgrounds (lawyers, lawyers, economists, professors d' university, civils servant international, engineers etc). Its seat is in Cotonou (BENIN). It is distinguished from the GERDDES Nationaux of which it makes promotion in the African States. It is present in 32 countries Africa of West, of the Center, Is and South. Its ambition is to cover all the continent before the end of the century. It counts more than 2.000 members.

He enjoys with Benign certain privileges within the framework the agreement seat signed with the Beninese government. GERDDES-Africa moreover was approved by the Economic and Social Council of the Nations Linked under the COInG of category II in June 1995.

The GERDDES-AFRIQUE-CIRD is a Democratic movement NonIn favour (MDNP), i.e. it is neither a political party, nor negation of the political parties. It was created well before Léo TINDEMANS, former First Belgian minister, declare, at the time of the equal assembly ACP/CEE which had been held in Luxembourg in September 1990, which follows: “In order to cultivate the values which Africa needs for its prestige, its reputation, its blooming and its development, the most clear-sighted Africans, couldn't the pioneers launch a popular movement fighting for more honesty in the company, more justice, not only against misery but also against the abuses and the exactions? The whole world would admire the courage of these Africans and I am convinced by it, would help them to make triumph their ideas. Youth would find a stimulant and a justified source of pride there”.

The GERDDES-AFRIQUE-CIRD, by making the promotion of the democracy to the service of economic development and social has a perception of the development which approaches the definition that Bernier (1984) gives some: “It is a process by which a company gives itself the means of mobilizing its producing forces in the transformation of its medium in order to improve the wellbeing and living conditions of its members. In short, a total process including the unit of the aspects of the life (physical bio mediums, production activities and of exchanges, behavior of consumption and culture) and implying the participation of the local government agencies as much in decision making that in the realization of the activities of development” (we insist particularly on this sentence).

Thus considered, the development lies less in one result reached than in a whole of activities carried out according to waitings of the communities concerned with their agreement and their participation. It is easy to note that such a development is not possible that under a democratic regime - the Democracy being defined as a political regime or an organization of the company in which or which the sovereignty of the decisions belongs to the whole of the citizens. The development thus perceived approaches or merges with the concept of the sustainable development which Report/ratio BRUNDTLAND defines as a dynamics of change which meets in an equitable way the fundamental needs for the current populations while being based on their active participation and the maintenance and the improvement of the planetary ecosystems in the respect of the future generations. It is thus not by chance so among the ethical principles and the requirements of the realization of sustainable development, it there at the active participation of the populations by a true democratic system. A democracy without which there cannot be a true development, viable, bearable.

It is what included/understood the GERDDES-AFRIQUE and its Founder president, Managing director of the CIRD, Me Sadikou Ayo ALAO, which the concern is to leave our continent the underdevelopment by the promotion of the democracy.

Let us announce that our COInG is the first Democratic movement NonIn favour Panafrican. The success which this COInG meets - it is enough to throw a glance on its credit after only 4 years of existence - testifies to the will of the Africans to build their continent.

If the GERDDES is political body of the Group, with its General meeting and her Office, the Board of directors and the CIRD (International Research Center on the Democracy and the Development) are the bodies of management, execution and of implementation of its programs. For this reason, they occupy a score permanently; agents having at their head a Founder president and an executive secretary.