The governance standards of at least two or three African countries are likely to come under scrutiny in the next few months, a senior official said on Friday.
This should help maintain the integrity of the peer review mechanism under the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad), head of the Nepad secretariat Wisemen Nkuhlu said.
”We are not planning to start with one country. It will be better to start with two or three countries at one go,” he told reporters in Pretoria.
The peer review mechanism is a voluntary process to foster political and economic governance that will lead to stability, high economic growth and sustainable development.
Forming part of the African Union’s (AU) Nepad programme, it has so far been ratified by 15 of the 53 AU member states.
They are South Africa, Algeria, Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, Uganda, Mali, Cameroon, Gabon, Burkina Faso and Senegal.
These countries have acceded to being reviewed by their peers in this group by signing a memorandum adopted in March by the participating countries.
A six-member panel of eminent persons announced recently will oversee the process. It will have an orientation session next month before starting its work.
Nkuhlu said Ghana had volunteered to be the first state to come under review, and would probably provide a good benchmark.
But bringing out a report on Ghana only in the initial stage could lead to the wrong conclusions.
”If we praise Ghana on everything, people would dismiss this review mechanism and say it is a (matter of) people scratching each others’ backs,” Nkuhlu said.
The secretariat hoped to convince participating countries with a poorer performance than Ghana to be included in the first review.
”We might also get a country like South Africa that may think it is doing everything right just to see how rigorous this process is,” Nkuhlu said.
”So, my view is that it will be better to get a good spread of countries and really test the theory of the peer review.”
Nkuhlu said it had been difficult to get the review mechanism accepted.
The overseeing panel and its teams would be free to interview anyone in the country under review, including opposition parties and the media.
This meant the participating heads of state were exposing themselves to comprehensive scrutiny.
”Nothing is sacred,” Nkuhlu said.
He said review reports would be made public after being considered by the participating heads of state.
Where shortcomings were found, the panel would make suggestions to the country concerned and monitor progress made.
If the country did not respond, peer pressure would be applied.
”The transparency of the process in itself will be a sanction,” Nkuhlu said.
Another sanction would be the perceptions of business and development partners about investing in the state not performing.
The final step would be measures such as transport sanctions under the Constitutive Act of the AU.
It was not surprising that only 15 countries had so far acceded to the process, Nkuhlu said.
Some countries could feel they did not want to be dictated to, while others might prefer to mind their own business.
”I am comfortable with the 15 countries, and expected fewer than that.”
Nkuhlu said the review process had little to do with impressing Western investors and sponsors. It was about African countries taking matters such as good governance and human rights seriously.
Ghana was, for example, doing most things right but was not attracting much foreign investment.
”So, just doing the things that the donors want is not enough for Africa to take off. We must… address the structural impediments to development in Africa,” Nkuhlu said. – Sapa