Texts and Reports - Good Governance in Africa - Preface

The comprehensive development strategy "New Partnership for Africa's Development" (NePAD) initiated by African governments is a key element in successfully realising the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) in Africa by 2015. The NePAD Initiative recognises good governance as providing an indispensable basis for development and in the process of reciprocal evaluation (Peer Review Mechanism) has created an innovative instrument to monitor the implementation of NePAD goals in national state policies.

The acknowledgement of the necessity for good governance in social, political and economic reforms provided central arguments for partner countries to actively support the NePAD Initiative. From very early on, the G8 state's governments showed their readiness to contribute to this inner-African political reform process. The significance attached to the NePAD Initiative is clearly reflected in both the "G8 Africa Action Plan" and the decision taken by the individual states and heads of government to appoint personal "Commissioners for African Affairs".

But the issue of good governance is not solely limited to African states. Experience in the European political arena has similarly shown how constant and repeated efforts are needed to ensure the principles of transparency and accountability are implemented. In particular, good governance presupposes that parliaments have a strong and constructive role to play. Democratically elected parliaments, as prescribed by the constitution, represent an important control institution for a government's actions.

For this reason, the BMZ was concerned to conduct a dialogue with parliamentarians from NePAD states on the opportunities for actively involving parliaments in the NePAD process and, in particular, in the APRM. The InWEnt Development Policy Forum has already convened an initial Policy Dialogue on this theme in 2003. The extended cooperation in AWEPA in 2004 provides a chance to expand the field for the exchange of parliamentarians' experience beyond the German Bundestag itself into a European setting.

This two-day Policy Dialogue considered how far good governance can be strengthened globally. Around 40 key figures from the area were invited to explore this issue, primarily parliamentarians from NePAD states, members of African supra-national parliaments, the German Bundestag and other national European parliaments, representatives of international organisations, the NePAD Secretariat, the African Union, and selected BMZ front-end organisations. The discussions did not only focus on such primary topics as accountability and transparency, but also debated practical concerns such as the instruments to implement the Peer Review Mechanism.

In this way, the Policy Dialogue offered a forum to exchange experience on how parliaments can form good governance and encourage the flow of information on the present state of NePAD implementation. The open forum format of this exchange and the informal character of the event offered the parliamentarians taking part an opportunity to explore informed opinion on these political processes and a chance to develop joint policy initiatives. In addition, prior to the "Round Table" held in the BMZ on day two, a number of ideas were aired on further integrating NePAD issues into German development cooperation with Africa in future.

The BMZ's support for this International Policy Dialogue underlines the readiness of the Federal Government to promote the NePAD Initiative. Convening a "Parliamentarians' Dialogue" realises the strengthening of parliamentary controls as the NePAD's primary policymaking task in the area of state action, detailed in Chapter 2 of the G8 Africa Action Plan. The Policy Dialogue's results have been made available to the Africa Partnership Forum.

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