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APRM  -  A LITMUS TEST FOR AFRICA'S FUTURE    

The African Peer Review Mechanism was one of the main features of the New Partnership for Africa's Development, introduced in 2001. It was designed to permit the world to see Africans as capable of helping each other to improve their condition by examining and suggesting improvements to each other's performance in the light of NEDPAD's own programme, and as a means of monitoring its performance. Ghana was the first country to opt for the process, and the final report is due to be published, after a meeting of the APRM Forum in December 2005. We talk to Professor Francis Appiah, Executive Secretary of the Governing Council of Ghana's National APRM, on how the exercise was carried out in Ghana and what the process means for Ghana and Africa. 

What was the origin of Ghana's involvement with NEPAD and the APRM?

When NEPAD was launched in 2001, Ghana housed its local secretariat at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs until 2003, when the Ministry of Regional Co-operation and NEPAD was set up. Ghana acceded to NEPAD and the African Peer Review Mechanism even before the call by ECOWAS Heads of State in Yamoussoukro in May, 2002 for the merger of the NEPAD and ECOWAS programmes, and on ECOWAS members to implement those programmes. The newly created NEPAD Secretariat became a post of the Ministry of Regional Co-operation and NEPAD in May 2003. The APRM was set up as an independent secretariat. Ghana was the first to access the APRM. On 18th March 2004 the President appointed seven Governors to take charge of the APRM's implementation.  

How did you set about the implementation and what is the road map that you had to follow in eventually producing the report?

We can talk about five main milestones. The first - the essence of the APRM - is that the people themselves make assessments of the four areas of Governance. Therefore, if they make pronouncements on it, then they must have understood it. So our first task was to educate and sensitise stakeholders so that we could create ownership of that process. We travelled through the length and breadth of the country, educating and sensitising stakeholders and appointed focal persons in all the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) to be the link between us and these institutions. 

Who are the main stakeholders?

Civil society groups: the trade unions, traditional leaders, market women, advocacy organisations, think tanks, the universities, the security services. We wanted a representative section of Members of Parliament. For example, we targeted the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs and we've been working with them more or less on a regular basis. We have other stakeholders in all the ten regions. We've also teamed up with the media, which has so far played a great role in this exercise. We organised training of trainers' courses for them and they in turn trained all the media representatives in all the regions. Last but not the least, we teamed up with the National Commission on Civic Education (NCCE) which has offices throughout the country. They helped a great lot with the most critical process of education and sensitisation. We are fortunate to have been given an independent structure and a membership made up of men and women with distinguished public service that has enabled us to be all-inclusive and non-partisan and to reach out to the entire Ghanaian population.
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