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Stages of the APR Process

Country Accession
At AU or APRM summit
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Country Support Missions
Country receives Support Mission from Secretariat
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Country Self-Assessment Review & Report (Stage 1)
Country completes CSAR & draft Program of Action
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Country Review Mission
(Stage 2)
Review Team (RT) meets stakeholders & assesses CSAR
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Compiling an official Country Report (Stage 3)
RT integrates CSAR and background research
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Opportunity for Government to Comment
Government comments appended to Draft report
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Presentation of Report
(Stage 4)
At AU or APRM summit
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Report made available for public scrutiny (Stage 5)
Civil society can access Report after 6 months
right arrowBackground Research by the Secretariat

APR Secretariat commissions background survey & technical review of country's governance practices

APR Secretariat provides background documentation for use by Country Review Team during the Country's official Country Review Mission

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PRINTABLE DIAGRAM

The stages of the African Peer Review Mechanism are detailed in several of the core documents in varying degrees of detail, including: The African Peer Review Mechanism Base Document, 9 March 2003; the APRM: Organization and Process, 9 March 2003; and the MOU on Technical Assessment and the Country Review Visit, 9 March 2003. According to these documents, there are four instances when a review may take place:

1. When a country officially accedes to the APRM process (Base review);

2. Periodic review which are meant to be conducted every two-four years (in practice this looks more likely to be every five years);

3. Upon a special request by an APRM member state for the APR Secretariat to initiate an ad hoc review; and

4. At any moment when early warning signs suggest an impending political, economic or social crisis in an APRM member state. This type of review would be conducted in the spirit of helpfulness between African states, and would be called for by the APRM Heads of State and Government Implementation Committee (APR Forum), in solidarity with the government concerned.

The process of conducting a review of a country's governance institutions and practices by its peers examines four thematic areas of governance:

Whilst some issues sit neatly within these four separate thematic areas, other issues such as the impact of crime or the treatment of HIV/AIDS are considered cross-cutting issues and are therefore dealt with under more than one of these themes. In order to assist a country in identifying significant sub-themes under these four areas of governance, each country is provided with an APRM self-assessment master questionnaire template which they are encouraged to use as a basis for examining their performance in each of the governance areas in question.

As the APRM is still in the early phases of its development, the majority of APRM member states have yet to complete their base review, and only Ghana, Kenya and Rwanda had published these base reviews by the date of publication, with a few other countries such as South African and Algeria soon to publish their own national base reviews.