3 to fund regional excellence centre project (page 47)

Story: Lucy Adoma Yeboah
CANADA, Germany and the World Bank have pledged to fund the establishment of a regional centre of excellence in Accra for the various governing councils of the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) within the West African sub-region.
The project, which is expected to begin early next year, will be used as a platform to generate knowledge on the process of peer review within the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) member countries.
Briefing journalists in Accra after his return from the African Union (AU) Summit in Egypt, the Executive Secretary of Ghana’s National African Peer Review Mechanism Governing Council (NAPRM-GC), Dr Frank Appiah, explained that the decision to choose Ghana for the project was based on the fact that the country’s governing council was noted for its good practices.
He pointed out that so far Ghana was the only country which did not have a minister supervising its APRM activities and, therefore, the governing council operated without any political interference.
He described the APRM system as an innovation which needed all the encouragement to succeed for others to learn from.
The APRM is a process by which individual African countries voluntarily offer themselves to be assessed in a non-partisan manner to identify their strengths, best practices, weaknesses, deficiencies and institutional capacity gaps which are then addressed through a National Programme of Action.
It is supposed to be a people-centred, people-owned and people-led process built on broad-based participation and national consensus by the entire citizenry.
Dr Appiah said out of a total of 53 AU countries, only 29 had so far agreed to be peer-reviewed, adding that countries in the sub-region which had taken the lead in the process were Ghana, Benin, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Mali and Togo.
He stated that the establishment of the centre of excellence would promote capacity building among governing councils, develop adequate knowledge, link the various councils to universities in the sub-region, promote regional co-operation and link the councils to supporting agencies.
He said in order to achieve its objective of a people-driven programme, Ghana had so far established 46 district oversight committees (DOCs) to promote transparency, accountability and all inclusiveness in the activities of the NAPRM within the communities.
Touching on the political situation in Zimbabwe, Dr Appiah said it would have been easier to deal with the problems if that country had acceded to be peer-reviewed, adding that ordinary Zimbabweans would have had the opportunity to officially complain to the rest of Africa if their country was a party to the process.
He said it would have been difficult for the Zimbabwean government to behave the way it was doing now if it knew that it would be called to account to others outside the country.
Citing Kenya as a case, Dr Appiah said when a similar problem arose in that country, it was easier to be resolved by the rest of Africa because the government was aware that it would have to defend itself among its peers, for which reason it was prepared to find solutions.
The executive secretary stressed that since membership of the APRM was voluntary, it was not possible for any organisation or country to force Zimbabwe or any other country that did not want to take part to do so, adding that the rest of Africa considered the Zimbabwean problem as a southern Africa one and, therefore, expected countries in that part of the continent to show the way.
Dr Appiah took the opportunity to advise all Ghanaians to have interest in the activities of the NAPRM, since it was non-political, adding that which ever government found itself in power would have to present the report on behalf of all Ghanaians in January 2009.