Pretoria - South Africa will host a meeting of African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) Focal Points in April, the Ministry for Public Service and Administration said on Friday.
The meeting on 13 and 14 April will take place in Durban, and follows on the presentation of the Operating Rules of Procedure for the APRM by Public Service and Administration Minister Roy Padayachie at an APRM meeting in Kenya on 14 March.
The purpose of the upcoming meeting will be to discuss the operationalisation of the newly adopted Operating Procedures for the APRM and consider the Revised Country Self-Assessment Questionnaire.
The APRM Focal Points are ministers or high-level government officials who report directly to their respective heads of state or government.
They are appointed soon after a country accedes to the mechanism and are responsible for managing the process, updating the heads of state or government on the national progress, facilitating the self-assessment process and liaising the African Peer Review (APR) Panel throughout the exercise.
The APRM Continental Secretariat initiated a project of revising the method and processes of the APRM in order to increase the mechanism on governance in member countries.
As part of this mandate, a Revised Country Self-Assessment Questionnaire for the African Peer Review Mechanism and Rules of Operating Procedure for the APRM were developed.
The Operating Procedures were unanimously adopted by the 16th Summit of the APR Forum in January 2012.
The revised Questionnaire for the African Peer Review Mechanism is expected to be considered by the 17th Summit in June 2012.
Both of these will be deliberated on at the 17th Summit of the Committee of Participating Heads of State and Government of the African Peer Review Mechanism scheduled for June 2012.
The Select Committee of Focal Points will thereafter monitor the implementation of the Operating Procedures.
