Introduction to the Toolkit

The idea of an interactive, CD-ROM based toolkit for civil society organizations was first conceived at a meeting of members of the Southern African Integration Network (SAINET) in Nairobi, Kenya in September 2005. Through the generous support of the Ford Foundation Special Initiative for Africa (SIA), the Development Policy Management Forum (DPMF) and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), this toolkit is made available to any civil society organization interested in or engaging with the African Peer Review Mechanism.

The APRM initiative offers civil society organizations one of the best opportunities for engagement with national governments and pan-African structures since the achievement of independence from colonial rule. However, major constraints limiting the effective engagement and participation of civil society organizations (in both an organized and informal sense) include: a critical shortage of factual, concise and easy to use information regarding the APRM's purpose, functions and means whereby civil society can engage with the mechanism at a national level. Furthermore, this toolkit has been designed to develop and evolve as new information and methods of engagement between civil society and national APRM structures become available. In this regard, the toolkit design team would like to encourage any interested CSOs who are interested in joining SAINET or making external contributions to the toolkit to contact the design team on aprm@eisa.org.za. Furthermore, updated versions of this toolkit can be downloaded from http://www.aprmtoolkit.org.

The APRM offers one of the most significant opportunities ever witnessed on the African continent for ordinary citizens to engage directly with a process which feeds into national governance strategies and processes. The success or failure of the initiative will depend to a large extent on the effectiveness of the engagement between African governments, the private sector and civil society groups and individuals. This toolkit aims at providing key stakeholders in civil society with an aid to achieving this vital objective.