In what he called the ―Eleven (11) bottlenecks facing Africa‖, the President identified issues that needed to be addressed for Africa to launch itself on the path of sustainable transformation. Furthermore, he also proposed that these were ―pertinent areas for review‖ that ―should be discussed and considered as part of the [APRM] tool.‖ 7 The 11 Bottlenecks in the President‘s list are:            Ideological disorientation; Interference with the private sector; Under-developed infrastructure; Weak states, especially weak institutions such as the Army, Police, etc.; Fragmented markets, market access and expansion; Lack of industrialisation and low value addition; Under-development of human resources; Under-development of agriculture; Under-development of the services sector; Attacks on democracy and governance; and A non-responsive civil service. The President discussed each of these bottlenecks in detail, explained why each one works to choke Africa‘s efforts towards socio-economic transformation, and concluded with an APRM-specific recommendation that ―when countries are being Peer reviewed, it is important to see how far we have gone in eliminating these bottlenecks‖. 8 The President‘s presentation was warmly received by his Peers, who further enriched and expanded on the bottlenecks. One additional issue that emerged from Summit deliberations, first mentioned by H. E. President Macky Sall of Senegal, concerned the poor state of domestic resource mobilisation in Africa, with particular emphasis on the meagre fiscal revenues generated from the Continent‘s abundant natural resources. The APR Forum welcomed the presentation from H. E. President Museveni and the interventions from other Heads of State and Government and instructed the APRM Secretariat to prepare and submit a report on the bottlenecks at their next meeting. It was during internal discussions and debates at the APRM Secretariat that a thirteenth bottleneck was identified, that of structural inequalities in access to opportunities. Most, if not all, of the thirteen bottlenecks covered in this report fall in one or another of the APRM thematic areas or crosscutting issues. Fundamentally, therefore, the bottlenecks can be understood as questions of governance that undermine Africa‘s ability to take full advantage of available opportunities. Indeed, the reason President Museveni chose to use the APR Forum as the platform to share his ideas and proposals is precisely because he believed the issues belong in the APRM and should become fully integrated into its tools and processes. In this spirit, President Museveni suggested a set of APRM-specific actions to be taken:      Review the APRM Methodology and Questionnaire to make it more focused and relevant to the current/emerging challenges facing the continent. APRM process to be reviewed and streamlined to avoid unwarranted delays in the production of the review reports. APRM recommendations should be more focused on a few critical challenges and high impact solutions in a country context. The APRM Panel should have deeper engagements with leadership and stakeholders to better understand the problems and potential solutions for the country. The APR Forum should identify regional champions with a reporting mandate at the Summits. This report seeks to interrogate these bottlenecks. It has been prepared with the firm conviction that it is within Africa‘s power to resolve them, and that doing so would have immense developmental multipliers for the continent. It seeks to suggest how the APRM tools and processes can be put to use to help inform policy that will take Africa forward. To that end, the report is structured as follows: first, it attempts to interpret, understand, conceptualise and explain what each bottleneck is about. It is worth noting at this stage that a number of proposals were made to revise the heading of each bottleneck to make them reflect their contents better. However, after a serious consideration, we chose to stick to the original headings for the bottlenecks and to provide commentary under the respective sections to give the clearest possible picture of what each bottleneck is about. Secondly, it asks what, if any, the APRM does today about each bottleneck. And, third, it asks what – or 7 8 H.E. Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, President of the Republic of Uganda, Reviewing the APRM Process: (Tool and Methodology): The 11 Bottlenecks Facing Africa (Discussion Paper presented to the 25th APR Forum Summit held in Nairobi, Kenya, on 26 August 2016, hereafter Discussion Paper), p. 2. Discussion Paper, p. 12. 13