New government asked to endorse the APRM process

THE National African Peer Review Mechanism Governing Council (NAPRM-GC) has asked the government to endorse the APRM process and ensure its facilitation to achieve growth and development for the people of Africa.
It said the council was a non-partisan body and the process was a people-centred process, which all government’s in Africa had to endorse to ensure the uplift of their people in a quest to re-ignite African renaissance.
The Chairman of the NAPRM-GC, Professor S. K. Adjapong, made the appeal in Accra yesterday when a 12-member APRM Commission from Benin visiting the country to learn from Ghana’s experience paid a courtesy call on the council at its secretariat.
He said he believed their work was beyond the government and expressed the hope that members of the current government would realise that and endorse the process, which had equally involved them when they were in opposition.
Briefing the APRM Commission from Benin, Prof. Adjapong advised them that a lot depended on the way they conducted their activities in a non-partisan approach, involving the people at the grassroots throughout the process.
He recalled that the NAPRM-GC attended a forum in Benin last year, where a consensus was reached that there was the need for a collaborative link among all the countries in the sub-region that had agreed to the review mechanism.
The idea of collaboration, he noted, was certainly in the right direction considering one of the goals of the APRM, which advocated the fostering of co-operation among African countries.
That, he believed, was part of a process to form the nucleus of the ECOWAS APRM group to ensure the overall development of the region.
For the visiting APRM Commission from Benin, Prof. Adjapong disclosed that the NAPRM-GC would organise a workers session for them to properly learn from Ghana’s experience.
On what Ghana had achieved so far in post-APRM, he indicated that the council had launched the APRM Watch, a report detailing the activities of the council, adding that the major post review of the process was the monitoring and evaluation of the Programme of Action, under which each country that had undergone the process was required to submit a report to the APRM Secretariat in South Africa.
The process, Prof. Adjapong indicated, had to be people-centred through sensitisation and dissemination of information at all levels, adding that “it must be domesticated to ensure its effectiveness”.
To ensure that, he said the council had inaugurated district oversight committees in all the 170 districts in Ghana to enhance the process, indicating that the committees were responsible for the continuation of the sensitisation process and the organisation of the people to be able to monitor and evaluate the process with the assistance of the Municipal and District Chief Executives.
He also disclosed the establishment of a Centre of Excellence for Ghana, Benin and Mali, which would later include Nigeria.
“The Centre is a place where students can visit, learn and conduct research on APRM,” he stated.
The outgoing Executive Secretary of the APRM Commission from Benin, Mr Seraphin Lissassi, said Benin was the first French-speaking country to be reviewed under the APRM and were happy having the opportunity to learn from Ghana’s experience.
He said it was important to recognise the process as an African process that every democratic government had to subject itself to.