AU, NEPAD and the APRM - democratisation efforts explored

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.