The Rwanda Country Review Mission

The Country Review Mission (CRM), which was headed by Prof Dorothy Njuema, comprised of 15 members and took place between 18 - 30 April 2005. The mission included members from the APR Secretariat, APRM partner institutions and independent technical experts.

Table 1 - Country Review Mission Team

The CRM undertook the following activities during its 13-day visit to Rwanda:

• A discussion on the Issues Paper prepared for the mission by the APR Secretariat, as well as the Background Report and Preliminary Program of Action submitted by Rwanda;
• A technical review of the Rwandan national assessment process to ensure that it was technically competent, credible and free of political manipulation;
• Consensus building exercises with national stakeholders on outstanding issues raised by the review and issues paper and identifying steps to achieve this consensus;
• Promoting and advancing the NEPAD/APRM agenda by interacting with key stakeholders and institutions shaping the four thematic areas of the APRM (in contrast to Ghana and Kenya, Rwanda did not appoint a single agency to engage in each of the our key governance areas of the APRM);
• Official visits to the APRM National Commission, Speaker of the National Assembly, Government Ministers, the Auditor General, parastatals, the National Bank of Rwanda, the judiciary, the Rwanda Revenue Authority, Rwanda's parliament, stakeholders from civil society and business leaders. At each of these meetings, which all took place in Kigali, stakeholders were given the opportunity to comment on the draft report and make additional submissions to the CRM;
• Consultations with provincial stakeholders including the provincial Governors, high-ranking officials and civil society stakeholders;
• A visit to the Genocide Memorial Site of Gisozi, and a courtesy visit to H. E. Paul Kagame, President of the Republic of Rwanda.

The CRM stopped short of declaring itself satisfied with the methodology adopted by the Rwandan people in assessing their governance practices and institutions, limiting its comment in this regard to the following statement:

It must be stated that it was not a function of the CRM or Panel to make its own assessments of the situation in Rwanda. The task of the CRM in the APRM process is indeed clearly identified in the AU Document on the African Peer Review Mechanism Organisation and Procedures: "the visit is an opportunity for the APRM team to discuss the draft Programme of Action that the country has drawn up to improve their governance and socio-economic development, to provide positive reinforcement for the sound aspects and to address identified weaknesses and shortcomings in the various areas of governance and development".

The CRM limited its comment largely to what it was presented with, and ultimately concluded that:

The APRM is, after all, based on structured on the non-negotiable principle of national ownership and leadership, and self-assessment.

The decision by the CRM to reserve comment on the quality of the country's national process is peculiar in that the review team is even by their own admission permitted to comment on the "identified weaknesses and shortcomings in various areas of governance", and these comments would neither undermine nor impinge on the country's national ownership and leadership. In the context in which the Rwandan self-assessment was undertaken, there would have been sufficient justification for the institutional and contextual challenges facing the country to warrant a qualified report being accepted by the mission, yet the reason why the mission stopped short of commenting on these weaknesses is not clear. Despite this lack of clarity, Rwanda's official Country Report was submitted to the AU and tabled for discussion on 19 June 2005 at the 3rd Summit of the APR Forum, and although not explicitly stated in the Country Report, the Rwandan model of self-assessment is not held up as a method which other countries undertaking their reviews should aspire to.

Table 2 - Key Dates in the Rwanda APRM Process