Pretoria - A workshop to look at what role civil society can play in tracking the implementation of the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) will kick off on Tuesday morning.
Public Service Minister Richard Baloyi will deliver the keynote address at the workshop jointly organised by the South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA) in Johannesburg.
The two-day workshop is entitled "Developing the Capacity of Civil Society to Track the Implementation of the African Peer Review Mechanism."
The peer review mechanism was established in 2003 as a self-monitoring mechanism for member states of the African Union to voluntarily undergo review across various sectors.
It epitomised a truly African solution to the challenges of governance and development.
The APRM encourages participating member states to align their policies and practices and ensure these conform to agreed political, economic and corporate governance values, codes and standards.
The process also seeks to ensure that mutually agreed socio-economic development objectives of the New Partnership for Africa's Development are achieved.
However, one of the greatest challenges for the APRM has been monitoring and reporting on the implementation of the National Programme of Action (NPoA.)
Furthermore, a number of implementation reports have lacked detail and did not provide concrete evidence which shows the extent to which the NPoA is being implemented.
To address this, the SAIIA and Centre for Policy Studies have launched a project to empower civil society in southern African APRM states to track the implementation of the NPoA in their countries.
Through this project, civil society organisations will be assisted to develop independent reviews of APRM implementation through the use of APRM Monitoring & Evaluation Tool (AMET).
During this workshop, a draft of AMET will be presented in order to receive feedback, so as to refine and improve the method for tracking and evaluating NPoAs.
