Kenya and the APRM

The methods by which Kenya produced its final country self-assessment report (CSAR) and Program of Action (PoA) were characterised by a number of delays, primarily caused by poor initial planning and procedural and funding complications mid-process. However, whilst its commitment to completing the APRM was tested, the Kenyan National Governing Council (NGC) ultimately demonstrated its determination to complete the process by taking remedial measures to ensure that the country's assessment was completed in a satisfactory manner. The Kenyan report was the third full report submitted to the APR Forum at the APR Summit in Banjul, the Gambia on 30 June 2006.

The Kenyan process demonstrates the importance of ensuring that prior to initiating a country's self-assessment process it is essential that a clear course of action is developed and broadly accepted by key stakeholders in the process. In particular, issues of leadership and complications arising from funding the country self-assessment were responsible for significant delays in the Kenyan review process. These delays, whilst ultimately not significant in impacting on the final report, could perhaps have been avoided with better preparation and coordination between government and civil society stakeholders. It should however be kept in mind that the Kenyan process was initiated at the same time as the Ghanaian and Rwandan reviews, and that at the time no existing methodologies or approaches had yet been tested. Despite the challenges Kenya faced in compiling its CSAR/PoA, the fact that the process was completed whilst maintaining the integrity of the research can be considered one of the key indicators of the country's commitment to the APRM process.