The African Peer Review Mechanism

The African Peer Review Mechanism is an important process for the transformation of Africa. The climax of it is that countries benefit from the gains of the Peer Review process when they implement the Programme of Action.

One of the strengths of the process is mutual accountability and responsibility to each other as participating countries. A country does this with support of her neighbors and other countries. This contributes to improved collaborations amongst states.

The process helps countries and states to come up with emerging issues, selecting issues of concern that should be given adequate and immediate attention, determining salient challenges facing a nation or state under review, identifying ideas for the solutions of the challenges. These ideas are subject to validation by the community and all stake holders before they are adopted to form the National Programme of Action. It is also a process for finding solutions for specific needs.

The APRM enables citizens to participate in the evaluation of how they are governed. Public involvement during the self-assessment and implementation phase of APRM process enables community engagement and participation in remediation. It also comes up with ways of developing models of community collaboration to improve the ability of community groups to hold their political and community leaders and themselves accountable.

Public involvement facilitates a positive change in the culture and values of people, businesses and organizations in the four thematic areas of Corporate Governance, Economic Governance Management, Socio-Economic Development and Democracy and Political Governance. It is a long-range change toward better awareness and improved stewardship at the community level. By changing the culture and values of those living in the community, a new set of sustainable behaviours can emerge. This can be one of the most subtle but powerful effects of broad public participation.

The process follows African and international standards and codes; deepens African solidarity; builds capacity in monitoring governance; show cases Africa’s innovative thinking in governance and contributes to facilitating greater advocacy.