• Accountability
• Government
• Private sector

Accountability

The paper discusses the Peer Review Mechanism (PRM) which is the principal means by which African governments can be held accountable for their poverty reduction initiatives as well as their actions generally.

The author says that while the PRM has the potential of becoming a barometer for evaluating progress by African states towards improving governance capabilities, accountability to the poor, and transparency in their transactions, in practice, the mechanism is facing serious operational challenges. These include:

• the PRM functions on the basis of collective action which means that African states will have to cede part of their sovereignty for the process to work and be credible and to be taken seriously by citizens and donors
• the PRM requires a national team of experts to be based within states if they are to provide accurate and reliable indicators on governments’ poverty reduction performance. However, African states lack this capacity
• the bloated bureaucracy found in African states may impede the channelling of money into community-based projects because of either inefficiency or corruption
• the fact that African states will police each other is no guarantee that governments will sideline African brotherhood to hold fellow leaders accountable for sub-standard performance with regard to their political and economic responsibilities
• the inclusion of civil society actors in the PRM process assumes that civil society in Africa is robust and has the capacity to do so. However, civil society in Africa still remains a fledgling sphere
• there is a contradiction between insisting on African ownership of the PRM and the partnership, on the one hand, and expecting that New Partnership for African Development ( NEPAD) )be financed largely by additional ODA and enhanced FDI flows, on the other

In this context, the author suggests ‘shadow reporting’ as an alternative vehicle for monitoring governments and for bringing them to account when defaulting. The donors are envisaged as partners with civil society in this regard.

• Full text of document
• Publisher details
• Send to a friend