The organization's annual Executive Council meeting will bring together, this year 'online', the Ministers of Foreign Affairs and External Relations of the organization's 55 member states.
The meeting, which precedes the summit of heads of state and government next weekend, takes place over two days in closed sessions, during which several reports and technical documents will be approved, which will be part of the summit agenda.
This year, in addition to the usual annual balance sheets on the activity of the AU and its executive organs, the heads of African diplomacy will examine a report on the organization's response to the covid-19 pandemic on the continent.
The highlight of the meeting, however, will be the election to various posts in the organization's executive organs, including the six new commissioners from the African Union, a race in which Angolan agronomist Josefa Leonel Correia Sacko is.
The diplomat and current AU Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Economy, the only Lusophone representative on the list of 25 pre-qualified candidates for commission positions, will seek re-election to the same portfolio, which will also include the Blue Economy and Environment.
According to the final list of pre-qualified candidates, to which the Lusa agency had access, the Angolan candidate is the best evaluated among the four candidates to this portfolio, with a score of 81.65 per cent.
Sacko's opponents in the race are representatives from Gambia, Uganda and Morocco.
Four judges will also be chosen for the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights, the six members of the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, six members of the African Union Consultative Council on Corruption (AUABC), and the President of Pan-African University.
The new African Union Commission, the first to be elected after the reform process begun in 2016 under the supervision of Rwandan President Paul Kagamé, will have fewer commissioners and will be chosen through a new merit-based system.
The new executive structure of the African Union will be composed of eight members, including a president, a vice president and six commissioners, two fewer seats than the previous commission.
For the chairmanship of the commission, the current president and former Chadian foreign minister, Moussa Faki Mahamat, is running for re-election without opposition, but needs to secure two-thirds of the countries' votes to remain in office.
The president and vice-president of the commission will be chosen only at the summit of heads of state and government, which this year takes place under the theme "Arts, Culture and Heritage: Leverages for the construction of the Africa we want.
The African Union comprises 54 countries, including Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Equatorial Guinea, Mozambique and São Tomé and Príncipe, in addition to the Sahrawi Republic, and its presidency is held in rotation by the countries for a period of one year.
The organization meets annually in an ordinary assembly in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where it has its headquarters.
This year's summit, which should focus discussions on the crisis caused by the covid-19 pandemic in the continent, will mark the passage of the current presidency from South Africa to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRCongo).
