Premier homegrown, African good governance tool, APRM celebrates 20 years with extra economic mandate
By Freeman Ya Ngulu.
The African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM), an African Union (AU) function voluntarily acceded to by its Member States, celebrated its main 20th Anniversary Celebrations this week in Johannesburg.
Announcing the landmark celebration, the African Union stated that the mechanism serves as an African-owned and African-led platform for self-assessment, peer-learning, and experience sharing in democracy and good governance.
The APRM has been conferred a further mandate to provide support to Member States in the field of international credit rating agencies, as well as to contribute to early warning for conflict prevention on the Continent, in harmony and synergy with the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA).
The 20th Anniversary of the APRM is celebrated through a series of meetings and events under the theme: “Accelerating and Deepening Governance Reform, Measures, and Intervention.’’
As a result of the revitalization process, the APRM has been positioned to monitor, evaluate and track the implementation in key governance areas on the continent, including the AU Agenda 2063, and the United Nations Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development.
In the last twenty years, the APRM has recorded significant progress with the number of its Member States increasing from six in 2003 to 43 at present. The Union of the Comoros is the latest AU Member State to accede to the Mechanism in February 2023.
As a governance tool, the APRM has the primary purpose of supporting policies, standards and practices that lead to political stability, high economic growth, sustainable and inclusive development and accelerated regional and continental economic integration. This is achieved through sharing of experiences and reinforcement of successful and best practices including providing up-to-date reliable data and information.
In relation with its core mandate, the Mechanism has made notable achievements. So far, 26 countries have undertaken the first country review, while Kenya, Uganda, Mozambique, Nigeria and South Africa have completed their second country reviews.
Apart from four original thematic areas of focus of the APRM (democracy and political governance; economic governance and management; corporate governance; and social economic development), the Mechanism has incorporated the 5th thematic area of focus, namely state resilience to shocks and disasters.
