The African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) is an autonomous entity within the African Union system whose main objective is to encourage the adoption of policies, standards and best practices that lead to good governance. The mechanism was initially conceived through a Declaration on the Implementation of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development Ass/AU/Decl.1 (I), that was adopted by the Inaugural Session of the Assembly of the African Union held in July 2002, in Durban, South Africa. In the Declaration, the Assembly reiterates its commitment to the Declaration on Democracy, Political, Economic and Corporate Governance and establishes the APRM as a country self-assessment and peer review mechanism, conceived and led by Africans to undertake governance assessments in the areas of Democracy and Political Governance; Economic Governance; Corporate Governance; and Sustainable Socio-Economic Development. The APRM was effectively integrated into the African Union at the 23rd Ordinary Session of the Assembly held in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, in July 2014, Assembly/AU/Dec/527 XXIII.

The core mandate of the APRM aims to promote the African Union’s ideals and shared values of democratic governance and inclusive development by encouraging all Member States of the Union to collaborate and voluntarily participate in the home grown, credible, rigorous, independent and self-driven peer review process and the implementation of its recommendations. The APRM Process aims to foster the adoption of policies, standards and practices that lead to political stability, high economic growth, sustainable and inclusive development, as well as accelerated regional and continental economic integration, through sharing of experiences and reinforcement of successful and best practices, including identifying deficiencies and assessing the needs for capacity building. In view of the COVID-19 pandemic that is affecting countries, it has become clear that this sudden challenge will affect African countries in an unprecedent way. It is for this reason that the APRM is also taking proactive action to address the implications of COVID-19 in its policies and methodologies.

Until the present pandemic, the APRM as an institution had assumed that its “comprehensive” methodology on governance and socio-economic development would naturally unearth all governance and socio-economic risks facing African countries, and that indeed, this superior methodology would act as an early warning tool for the African Union. The pandemic has clearly highlighted that this is not the case. It is for this reason that the APRM is shaping its work around proper governance planning which includes the goal of making African States more self-reliant to ensure that they are able to respond adequately to any current and future possible crises, and purposely capacitate them function optimally in times of crisis.