Support African monitoring system, President Kenyatta says

Kenya has urged African countries to revive an African Union monitoring system as a way of improving governance and political stability among member states.

President Uhuru Kenyatta on Saturday said AU member states have an urgent obligation to support the work of the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) and make it the source of continental policy standards.

“The APR mechanism has lost much of its lustre as an innovative, home-grown and effective tool to deliver on good governance for Africa,” he told the 23rd summit of the heads of state of APRM in Johannesburg.

“Its promise of enhancing good governance is fast waning. It has given way to routine exercises that do not instill enthusiastic commitment to leadership transformation reminiscent of past years.”

Launched in 2003, the APRM was intended to be an instrument for member states to voluntarily look inwards for assessment on certain areas of political environment, economic policies and civil liberties.

Its membership is voluntary. It currently has 35 members drawn from the AU member states, and is supposed to help countries adopt better laws and practices that the AU argued would counter political violence, improve economies and lead to regional integration.

FACING CHALLENGES

However, the enthusiasm with which it was created seems to be waning. For example, APRM used to publish country review reports on performance of member countries but lack of finances and low impact have contributed to the documents being published infrequently.

To assess member countries, APRM often sends out questionnaires to governments asking certain questions on legal and policy provisions. Some critics have argued the questionnaire was too general.

But in 2012, the APRM Secretariat started revising the method used to assess country governance standards. It developed the Revised Country Self-Assessment Questionnaire which was to ask specific questions. It also developed rules of operation. Both documents were endorsed at APRM summits in 2012.

However, APRM currently has no chief executive despite a previous bid to recruit, and has been able to only document performance of 17 of the 35 countries so far.

APRM suffers from two challenges: member states, who are fewer than those in the AU, cannot be compelled to produce information within given timelines, they can only volunteer.

And since it relies on member states for funding, its reports have been only mild, hardly criticising those performing poorly.

President Kenyatta, who was elected the Chairman of the Forum to replace Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, argued Africa will not develop if it cannot adopt universal standards set by its on policymakers.

“We bear a moral responsibility to revitalise the APR Mechanism. It is a cornerstone in Africa’s efforts to realise good governance. It is the collective responsibility of our generation of Africa’s leaders to restore the credibility of APRM.”

The leaders meeting on the sidelines of the 25th ordinary summit of the African Union also agreed to hold a conference later in Nairobi to discuss how to improve the monitoring system.

The decision followed a request on Friday by a committee of ministers within the APRM who are charged with reporting to their governments on the progress the system makes.