For two years Africa’s leading reformers have been raising expections on and off the continent with a novel promise: To avoid repeating the sins of the past, heads of state would hold each other accountable to higher standards. Now the hype is over. Amid much anticipation, the African Peer Review Mechanism is gearing up to begin its first assessments.
As a core element of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), peer review is potentially the most innovative initiative ever to emerge from Africa. Its purpose is to build more stable and prosperous countries. That means sharing ideas that work, identifying what doesn’t, and taking an unambiguous stand against corruption. But so far few exercises have been less transformative than African leaders passing judgment on one another.
Look no farther than Zimbabwe for proof. While Robert Mugabe violently dismantles a state that was, until recently, functional, his peers applaud. So which vision of peer review is it to be? Vigorous and constructive criticism or more coddling of autocrats? Africa’s credibility -and probably its future- hinges on the answer.
Through Nepad, African reformers have helped open a more robust discussion about prevailing global imbalances that have hamstrung African development for decades. Their pleas have helped shift the international dialogue on aid, for example, and trade. But the bulk of Africa’s governance and development problems must be fixed through concerted action at the national level. As a tiny continental organisation, the Nepad Secretariat has no capacity to force nations to act. By requiring leaders to create national action plans and submit them to broad public scrutiny, peer review offers the possibility of making Nepad a reality at the national level where it is needed most. For peer review to work in this way, it must become a fully open process, encouraging robust public debate and involving the broadest array of civil society.
So far that hasn’t been the case. Peer review was conceived behind closed doors, and concerns about how transparent it will be rightly persist. Africans deserve better, and as peer review gets underway, must demand more. Unfortunately, much of African civil society has not mobilised to exploit the opening that peer review offers. This issue of eAfrica examines the intended APRM system and compares it to the peer review system used in the Organisation for Economic Development and Cooperation. We also present a roundtable debate on the role of civil society in peer review by a panel of African scholars. Other stories assess the impact of the Cancun trade talks and the vicious cycle of food aid and poverty in West Africa.
This issue of eAfrica is available here in PDF format.
