Briefing Paper

The African Peer Review Mechanism Ten Years on: How Can it be Strengthened?

The African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM)
celebrated its tenth anniversary in March 2013. A voluntary and African owned
framework, it aims to improve governance on the continent. The APRM utilises a system of peer reviews to achieve this goal. Its country reviews are analogous
to a performance assessment in an office. In the case of the APRM, a member state develops a Country Self-Assessment Report, which is followed by a separate assessment conducted by an external Country Review Mission. The two reviews are then combined into a single Country Review Report (CRR) that includes a National Programme of Action (NPoA) covering four thematic areas: democracy and political governance;
economic governance and management; corporate governance; and socio-economic development.