By Correspondent Hassan Abbas, Addis Ababa
The African Union (AU) has lauded its governance assessment programme-the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) for its contribution to the Continent's development and democratization agenda.
The statement was issued on Friday by the chair of the AU Commission, Dr. Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma during an interaction panel between African Media experts and selected African leaders and attended by the Kenyan Deputy President, William Ruto.
Dr. Suma said the APRM has promoted the culture of dialogue among participating African countries to resolve the problems of development and governance among member states.
"The voluntary Mechanism is doing very well. There were few countries at the beginning but now the membership is about 32 African countries," said Dr. Zuma expressing her appreciation that in many countries the APRM has also acted as an early warning mechanism to imminent conflicts.
She cited the example of Kenya's APRM report which in 2007 had warned of a possibility of violence if the elections are held without due regard to some issues like the constitution amendments.
"In Kenya APRM is a testimony of its own value. The report warned on key areas that the then government ought to have addressed them before elections. These were however ignored and the country went into violence," she said.
She underscored that APRM is here to contribute to Africa's development goals by involving the people to sit and discuss with their own governments. "APRM is not a blame game or ranking index, the Mechanism is meant to be used as a forum for all stakeholders to participate in the making of their own countries," she hinted.
She however cited some challenges facing the Mechanism to include its current slow pace in dealing with the country reviews. "Having more countries joining is a challenge as we can currently review only two countries in a year," she said promising for more improvement.
Dr. Nkosazana's remarks comes at a time the APRM Panel of Eminent Persons is fighting hard to improve the status of the Mechanism from a programme to an autonomous Institution of the AU in a bid to address current institutional challenges.
Tanzania is among the 32 participating countries having joined the APRM in 2004. The country has recently completed its Review Report which is scheduled to be launched this month.
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