New Publication from the Nordic Africa Institute:

Charles Manga Fombad and Zein Kebonang

Edited by Henning Melber

AU, NEPAD and the APRM
Democratisation Efforts Explored

Current African Issues 32
Pages: 56 pp Published: April 2006
ISBN: 91-7106-569-5 ISSN: 0280-2171

Keywords :
Institutional framework, African organizations, African Union, NEPAD,
democratization, governance, Government policy, Development strategy,
Legal aspects

For more information see below or please visit our website
http://www.nai.uu.se/publ/publeng.html

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Description

The African Union (AU) and the New Partnership for Africa's
Development (NEPAD) represent an unprecedented collective political
effort by African governments at the beginning of the 21st century to
address issues of democracy and good governance on a continental scale
within an emerging framework of institutions and instruments designed
to assist in this effort. The visible commitments to jointly tackle
political and socioeconomic challenges in order to overcome the
structural legacies that hamper national and social development are
reflected in the adoption of a variety of programmatic blueprints and
a series of newly created or recently strengthened institutions. The
most visible of these since the integration of NEPAD into the AU is
the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM), a process- aimed at
addressing some of the challenges on the basis of a voluntary
assessment of African government policies.
The contributions to this publication trace these recent developments
from a policy perspective and explore the scope and limitations of
current democratisation efforts. Going beyond the rhetoric surrounding
the emergence of the new initiatives, the authors provide an interim
and realistic prognosis of the prospects for these new dynamics to
achieve the declared goals of sustainable and meaningful change.

Charles Manga Fombad studied law at the University of Yaoundé and
obtained his Ph.D. from the University of London. He is Associate
Professor in the Department of Law, University of Botswana in
Gaborone.

Zein Kebonang studied law at the University of Botswana and at
Harvard and obtained a Ph.D. from the Australian National University,
Canberra. He is Lecturer in the Department of Law, University of
Botswana in Gaborone.

Henning Melber studied political science and sociology at the Freie
Universität in Berlin and obtained a Ph.D. and a venia legendi in
development studies from Bremen University. He is Research Director of
the Nordic Africa Institute.

Available for download.

Contents

Henning Melber
AU, NEPAD, and the APRM – Towards Democratic Change?
Introductory Remarks

Charles Manga Fombad
The African Union, Democracy and Good Governance

Zein Kebonang and Charles Manga Fombad
The African Peer Review Mechanism:
Challenges and Prospects

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