The South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA) and the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) cordially invite you to a scoping workshop entitled “Developing the Capacity of Civil Society to Track the Implementation of the African Peer Review Mechanism”, which will take place on 12-13 October 2010 at SAIIA’s head office at Jan Smuts House, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. The keynote address will be given by the Minister of Public Service and Administration and South Africa’s African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) Focal Point, the Honorable Minister Richard Baloyi.

The African Peer Review Mechanism was established in 2003 as an innovative instrument aimed at improving governance in Africa, created and driven by Africans for Africans. Through a series of voluntary governance reviews, member states aim at collectively improving governance on the continent through sharing best practices and following recommendations made by the APRM Panel of Eminent Persons. The intention of these reviews is to spur reform – at the end of the review each country embarks on implementing a National Programme of Action (NPoA), according to which it is supposed to carry out pre-agreed commitments aimed at improving governance. To date, 30 African states have signed up to the APRM and 13 of these have undergone their first review – including four in southern Africa (South Africa, Mozambique, Lesotho and Mauritius).

One of the greatest challenges for the APRM has been monitoring and reporting on the implementation of the NPoA. There are only loose procedures and guidelines for Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) and some countries have already missed deadlines for submitting their annual NPoA implementation reports. Furthermore, a number of implementation reports have lacked detail and did not provide concrete evidence and data which shows the extent to which the NPoA is being implemented. They also tended not to reflect the voices of civil society organisations (CSOs).

SAIIA and CPS have launched a project to empower civil society in Southern African APRM states to track the implementation of the APRM in their countries, known as the APRM Monitoring Project (AMP). Through this project, CSOs will be assisted to develop independent reviews of APRM implementation through the use of an APRM Monitoring & Evaluation Tool (AMET). The AMET is not intended to duplicate the work of the relevant national APRM agencies, but to complement and expand upon existing M&E processes. During this scoping workshop, a draft of AMET will be presented in order to receive feedback, so as to refine and improve the method for tracking and evaluating NPoAs. In addition, other key elements of the AMP will be shared and discussed. We would value your input and hope to welcome you in Johannesburg this October.

RSVP to Ms Gontse Legong at Gontse.Legong@wits.ac.za or on 011 339-2021 ext. 153 by 30 September 2010. Places are limited, so please respond timeously.

AMP SCOPING WORKSHOP PROGRAMME

Programme subject to change

This workshop is part of a project funded by the Open Society Foundation of South Africa (OSF-SA), the Open Society Initiative in Southern Africa (OSISA) and the African Governance Monitoring and Advocacy Programme (AfriMAP)