Top ARPM job for SA’s Eddy Maloka

Diplomat and academic Eddy Maloka was appointed to head the secretariat of the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) in an attempt by the African Union to revive the flagging initiative. File picture: Paballo Thekiso

Diplomat and academic Eddy Maloka was appointed to head the secretariat of the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) in an attempt by the African Union to revive the flagging initiative. File picture: Paballo Thekiso

Published Jan 29, 2016

Share

Addis Ababa – South African diplomat and academic Eddy Maloka was appointed on Friday to head the secretariat of the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) in an attempt by the African Union to revive the flagging initiative.

Maloka, who is an adviser to International Relations and Co-operation Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, and South Africa’s special adviser to the Great Lakes region, will become the first permanent CEO of the APRM in eight years.

He was appointed at a summit of the APRM in Addis Ababa on Friday – the committee representing the 35 African countries that have volunteered to have their governance scrutinised by the APRM.

The forum is currently headed by Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta, who chaired Friday’s meeting which decided on several measures to try to breathe new life into the APRM.

He told the forum, which included South African President Jacob Zuma, Rwandan President Paul Kagame, and Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi, that the APRM had been launched in 2003 with great enthusiasm because it embodied the promise to achieve good governance.

But it had recently “lost its vitality”, he said. The pace of accession to the voluntary APRM had slowed down and only half of the 35 countries which had joined it had submitted to peer reviews.

Payment of membership dues had dwindled and so foreign donors had also reduced their funding.

Yet, if Africa was to achieve its potential and realise its programmes, such as Agenda 2063 and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, improving governance was critical and therefore the APRM had to be revitalised and strengthened.

After the forum summit Kenyatta said the leaders had committed to revitalising the APRM, and ensuring its independence and mobilising the necessary resources to enable it to do its work.

The APRM leaders had also committed themselves to try to persuade other countries to join, so that all AU members were ultimately members also of “an African mechanism, developed by Africans, driven by Africans”.

Because of the fading interest in the APRM the last country reviews were published in 2013, though there had recently been signs of an incipient revival as Djibouti’s review was expected to be presented at Friday’s forum.

Kenyatta disclosed that Djibouti had given just an outline of its country report on Friday but that the full peer review – in which the country’s leader had to defend his country’s performance before his fellow leaders – would only happen at the next summit in July in Rwanda.

Maloka said he looked forward to taking up his new job. “But I know it will be a big challenge. Fortunately member states want a strong and vibrant APRM. Our task will be to help make sure that happens. “

Nepad CEO Ibrahim Mayaki, who has been acting CEO of the APRM for the past few years, said the APRM was more necessary than ever because of the many problems which Africa faced. He linked the political governance code which the APRM monitors to preventing violence, saying that election disputes often degenerated into conflict.

African News Agency

* Use IOL’s Facebook and Twitter pages to comment on our stories. See links below.

Related Topics: