APRM

Africa may be rising, but its success is primarily measured by economic growth and development, while discourse on democratisation is far less prominent than at the onset of the new millennium. At the same time, many African states are forging ever-deeper ties with emerging powers that seem to place little value on democracy and human rights.

This begs the question of whether Africa’s leaders are still committed to advancing good governance, accountability and transparency.

The recent 19th African Union Summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, injected new momentum into the decade old African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) with the appointment of new leadership to the APR Forum and the APR Panel. President, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, and Barrister Akere Muna, president of the African Bar Association and also vice chair of Transparency International, will play pivotal roles in the two afore-mentioned governing bodies of Africa’s unique voluntary governance assessment instrument.

In a week that saw two Somali traders shot dead in Cape Town and two more in Port Elizabeth, the South African government's handling of xenophobia received the lowest possible rating in a report by the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) Monitoring Project.

Three years after widespread violence against foreigners broke out across the country, evaluators from the Monitoring Project noted that the government had failed to prioritise the issue, and that "there is even an element of denialism on the part of some officials."