Strengthening Democracy through NEPAD

NEPAD, Democracy & African Civil Society

The African continent has undergone momentous political change since the last decade. Throughout the whole continent, non-elected and authoritarian regimes of both civilian and military varieties have been replaced by elected and democratic regimes. Whereas the former drew their legitimacy and credibility from coercion (bullet), the latter draw their legitimacy and credibility from persuasion (ballot). Part of the political change from authoritarian rule to democratic governance has to do with progress on decentralization of power and authority to local communities. Whether the democratization process takes place at the macro-level of a nation or a micro-level of a community, however, the role of civil society organizations is key in ensuring broader participation of various stakeholders in the process.

On the other hand, the governance process in Africa is reflective of the current democratic wave and to this extent, it is abundantly evident that increasingly the continent is shifting away from the pervasive trend of 'bad' governance towards 'good' governance. The key element of the governance in Africa is obviously the extent to which the process is institutionalized effectively and sufficiently. Linked to this point, of course, is the extent to which civil society agencies also get adequately involved and included in any existing institutional framework for governance.

The New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) is the latest in a host of concerted efforts by African leaders to attempt to find both economic and political solutions to the continent's vexed problems of development. NEPAD identifies four main priority areas that require urgent attention namely:

  • the peace and security initiative;
  • the democracy and political governance initiative;
  • the economic management and corporate governance initiative; and
  • the regional cooperation and integration initiative.

The NEPAD Heads of State and Government Implementation Committee (HSGIC) in its 3rd meeting of June 2002 held in Rome, Italy approved the Declaration on Democracy, Political, Economic and Corporate Governance following the adoption of the African Peer Review Mechanism in its previous meeting of March. In respect of the Declaration, NEPAD commits African states to the following principles:

  • to adopt clear codes, standards and indicators of good governance;
  • to accountable, efficient and effective civil service;
  • to ensure the effective functioning of parliaments and other accountability institutions;
  • to the establishment and strengthening of parliamentary committees and anti-corruption bodies; and
  • to ensure independence of the judiciary system is able to prevent abuse of power and corruption.

The African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) emanates directly from the above principles and its overall purpose is to allow African states monitor and observe each other on progress (or lack thereof) towards good governance. Its primary objective is to foster the adoption of policies, standards and practices that lead to political stability, high economic growth, sustainable development and accelerated continental and regional cooperation and integration.
The APRM is planned to evolve through four stages, namely:

  • stage one that involves a study of the political, economic and corporate governance and development environment in each country prepared by the APRM Secretariat;
  • stage two that involves country visits by the Review Team for purposes of carrying out wide-ranging consultations with key stakeholders including both state and non-state actors;
  • stage three that involves the preparation of country reports by the Review Team on the basis of both the preliminary studies and country-based consultations and this will also allow responses to the report by governments concerned; and
  • stage four that involves the submission of the Review Team's report and responses from governments to the Heads of State and Government through the APRM Secretariat who are expected to consider and adopt the final report. On the face value, this seems a noble initiative and sounds fairly straightforward and easy to implement. However, controversy still dogs the implementation of the APRM.

Since the on-set of democratization in Africa which began in earnest during the early 1990s, the most glaring and vigorously debated aspect of this momentous development has been elections. The focus on elections in the democracy debate should not give the erroneous impression that elections per se are ipso facto synonymous with democracy. Put differently, elections do not amount to democracy even though they form an important component or ingredient of democratization as it were. An election, in and of itself, cannot provide a sufficient anchor upon which democracy could be predicated. A lot more ingredients are requires for democracy to be nurtured and consolidated. However, the value of elections to a democracy is surely beyond any shadow of the doubt even among the strident cynics of multi-party democracy today. Elections play a valuable role to any democracy including:

  • allowing the electorate to choose freely their national and local leaders;
  • renewing or terminating the mandate of those leaders after a constitutionally determined tenure of office;
  • according both central and local government national and international legitimacy and credibility;
  • assuring the national and local leadership the moral title to rule on behalf of the electorate;
  • ensuring accountability of leaders to the people, representation of the governed by the government, participation of the people in the governance process through ballot rather than bullet politics.

There is no doubt that the nurturing and consolidation of democracy in Africa requires concerted and collaborative efforts of various stakeholders including civil society. It is crucial that all parties including governments recognize and accept this stark reality. The governance process as well as the democratization project will not reach their logical conclusion and achieve desired results if these complex processes could be perceived as the sole purview or preserve of governments and electoral management bodies alone. A whole range of stakeholders should be included in both processes of governance and democratization in order to ensure inclusivity, representativity, accountability, transparency and legitimacy of responsible institutions and systems.