Document Abstract
Published:
1 Apr 2008
Regional organizations and incentives to improve governance: The APRM experience, with particular reference to Ghana
Improving governance through the APRM: Ghana and the wider African context
The African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) is seen as the main tool for improving governance in Africa.
The APRM is designed as a self-evaluation mechanism, to be voluntarily acceded to by a country by signing a Memorandum of Understanding regarding how to conduct the assessment of the country’s state of governance. The quality of governance is mutually evaluated in four areas on a largely standardised basis: (i) democratic and political governance; (ii) economic governance and management; (iii) corporate governance; and (iv) socio-economic development. There are guiding objectives, standards, criteria and indicators to assess each of the thematic governance areas, which link back to AU norms.
This paper aspires to be a comprehensive exercise in its review of the APRM process on the continent, yet some topics such as agriculture or the informal sector are insufficiently covered – despite their importance for large sections of the population – which suggests structural neglect. Politically-sensitive areas such as the rights of minority groups were omitted in the original country reports, even in the case of good performers such as Ghana and South Africa.
The case of Ghana offers lessons on the promise and shortcomings of the process - and is generally perceived so far as the best-practice example of APRM assessment - and will be a focus in this report. As front-runner of the APRM, Ghana set fairly high standards for the review. Its report is indeed comprehensive (with the caveats mentioned above) and it addresses problems at the various levels of the political system without shying away from criticisms and raising pertinent issues in the area of human rights.
The authors offer a number of conclusions which include:
The APRM is designed as a self-evaluation mechanism, to be voluntarily acceded to by a country by signing a Memorandum of Understanding regarding how to conduct the assessment of the country’s state of governance. The quality of governance is mutually evaluated in four areas on a largely standardised basis: (i) democratic and political governance; (ii) economic governance and management; (iii) corporate governance; and (iv) socio-economic development. There are guiding objectives, standards, criteria and indicators to assess each of the thematic governance areas, which link back to AU norms.
This paper aspires to be a comprehensive exercise in its review of the APRM process on the continent, yet some topics such as agriculture or the informal sector are insufficiently covered – despite their importance for large sections of the population – which suggests structural neglect. Politically-sensitive areas such as the rights of minority groups were omitted in the original country reports, even in the case of good performers such as Ghana and South Africa.
The case of Ghana offers lessons on the promise and shortcomings of the process - and is generally perceived so far as the best-practice example of APRM assessment - and will be a focus in this report. As front-runner of the APRM, Ghana set fairly high standards for the review. Its report is indeed comprehensive (with the caveats mentioned above) and it addresses problems at the various levels of the political system without shying away from criticisms and raising pertinent issues in the area of human rights.
The authors offer a number of conclusions which include:
- Credibility of the continental structure of key monitoring bodies in Africa is key to generating donor confidence in the political will of nations to tackle identified shortcomings
- The APRM seeks to position itself as an ‘elitist club’ of African countries aspiring to provide best-practice examples of good governance. But there is the risk that its standards will be watered down for the sake of fostering AU consensus and it will thereby lose some of its initial appeal as a club worth belonging to
- International acknowledgement of Ghana as a ground-breaking example can create incentives for others to participate. As the first peer review of an African country, it was generally respectful of continental standards and rules, and came up with critical findings on one of the good performers in Africa which were also openly discussed
- Capacity constraints appear to be a crucial bottleneck in Ghana, and equally or even more important in other African countries. Leadership is a key factor in any reform process, yet in a context of weak structures, leadership is not enough.
