A briefing to the Pan African Parliament (PAP) on progress made with the continent’s development plan and peer review system was postponed on Friday to the body’s next sitting later this year.
The briefing, scheduled for Friday, was cancelled on account of the unavailability of Wiseman Nkhuhlu — chief executive officer of the secretariat of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad).
”Prof Nkhuhlu is in Nigeria for an African Partnership Forum meeting,” said secretariat spokesperson Thaninga Shope-Linney.
She said four countries have been subjected to peer reviews thus far to determine whether they complied with a set of agreed principles of good governance. They were Rwanda, Ghana, Mauritius and Kenya.
The outcome of the reviews would first be reported to a government and heads of state meeting of the Nepad implementation committee on April 19 in Egypt, Shope-Linney said.
On the same day, there would also be a report to the African Peer Review Forum — comprising 23 heads of state of countries that have signed up.
The report would not have been made to the PAP on Friday as it was not the correct channel, Shope-Linney said.
PAP spokesperson Khuitse Diseko said there would be no time for the briefing to take place later.
The PAP’s third sitting, which started last Wednesday, was due to conclude its work with the approval of resolutions and recommendations on Friday afternoon.
Next Monday, it would hold an official closing ceremony in the morning, expected to be followed by a press conference on the outcome of the meeting.
Issues on the agenda have included the creation of a trust fund as an alternative source of funding, communication and transport problems in Africa, United Nations Reform, and HIV/Aids in Africa.
Tuesday was spent in a debate on the conflict in the Sudan’s western Darfur region.
On Friday morning, eight retired African presidents addressed the PAP’s final work day. They were Nicephore Soglo (Benin), Ketumile Masire (Botswana), Antonio Monteiro (Cape Verde), Jerry Rawlings (Ghana), Daniel arap Moi (Kenya), Karl Offman (Mauritius), Ali Hassan Mwinyi (Tanzania), and Kenneth Kaunda (Zambia).
According to Diseko, the leaders urged Africa to take the work of the parliament seriously and provide assistance to help it emerge from its infancy.
The body’s success was essential to aligning continental pans in order to achieve common development goals, they said.
The eight former presidents were in South Africa to attend a meeting of an African Presidential Archives and Research Centre, Diseko said, but decided to stop by Midrand to show their support to the PAP. — Sapa