Global Policy Forum

By Colm Allan and Zohra Dawood

The New Partnership for Africa's Development (Nepad) is a unique opportunity to improve governance in Africa and lure investment to our suffering continent.

But its conception of government accountability will have to be redefined. The inclusion of African civil society, particularly, in its proposed monitoring mechanisms would give the plan real weight on the continent.

Nepad's proponents see it as an external partnership between African leaders and international donor governments. Its foundation stone is a commitment to uphold global standards of democracy and good governance. But if these are to become real, Nepad will have to be transformed into an internal relationship of accountability between African governments and their own citizens.

The acceptance of the outcome of the recent Zimbabwean presidential elections as "legitimate" by many African leaders, including Thabo Mbeki, has cast a shadow over Nepad's commitments. In this context, neither African civil society nor international donors is likely to be convinced by mere promises. Both will want to see credible evidence that reform is happening in corrupt and conflict-ridden African states before they increase their support.

From the viewpoint of African civil society, good governance means the accountable management of public resources in the best interests of citizens. It is not a personality trait of individual leaders, rather a continuing relationship of obligation between leaders and African people.

To make any judgement about good governance, this internal relationship has to be continuously monitored. Such monitoring needs to go beyond the formal enactment of democratic policies to substantive parliamentary and civil society oversight of the state.

World financial institutions, donor governments and African civil society have a common interest in accurate and reliable information, not just on policy reforms, but about the resources available to African governments and how these are managed.

African leaders have proposed a peer review mechanism to monitor compliance with Nepad's commitments. Composed of African heads of state, this would review compliance with good governance obligations by member states every three years. This mechanism will fail in its task if reviews happen periodically and rigorous criteria - and the consequences for deviant governments - are not spelled out. It seems that African heads of state will be left to judge their own performance.

The proposed peer review shows that Nepad leaders do not yet recognise accountable governance as a relationship of obligation between governments and citizens, rather than between governments.

Competent and independent members of African civil society would be better placed to judge whether African governments are accountable to the people and to monitor compliance with Nepad.

What is really needed is the creation of specialised independent monitoring institutions in all signatory states. Such bodies would have a number of advantages - foremost among them their independence from governments and heads of state.

They would be able to monitor policy implementation, institutional performance and financial management continuously and in detail. The information they generate would reinforce the ability of African civil society to hold its own governments accountable. It would lay the basis for transforming Nepad into an initiative driven by the African people, rather than African governments alone.

Independent monitoring institutions would be an important break with the ineffectual approach adopted by donor governments and world financial bodies in the past. Many donor governments have been justly criticised for handing out aid on the basis of geopolitical and other considerations, and of judging the way it is used on the strength of their own strategic and political objectives.

Financial institutions have been similarly criticised for imposing external macro-economic adjustment programmes on developing states in order to open up their economies and make them more competitive - generally at the expense of social welfare and educational infrastructure.

Independent monitors would use as their standards domestic policy undertakings and Nepad commitments. The information they gather, and their assessment of government performance, could then provide the basis for attaching conditions to donor aid. These, in turn, would act as an incentive to Nepad signatories to bring about democratic reforms.

Of course, it will only be possible to base penalties and incentives on their information if the monitoring methods are rigorous and reliable.

Two areas would have to be covered. The first is a focus on the central features of democracy, including basic constitutional, legislative and policy frameworks, to establish whether these can support democratic governance structures. Specifically, the monitors would seek to measure the degree of parliamentary and civil society oversight of signatory states.

Secondly, a detailed review of public sector performance would be needed. What human and financial resources do governments make available through the national budget? How is the budget organised and how is money transferred to sub-national levels? How effectively do the executive members who manage resources plan for their use? How well do they implement these plans? Finally, how much service delivery or investment in infrastructure actually results?

Finding answers to these questions will mean detailed access to information on government budgets, tax revenues and spending. This in turn implies constitutional and legal provisions guaranteeing transparency and access to information.

If these legislative guarantees are not in place, monitoring will be a non-starter. Any judgement on the performance of African leaders, or the accountability of African governments, will amount to little more than speculation.

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