What – or what more – can the APRM do about fragmented markets, market access and expansion 4. Despite the importance of regional integration to Africa‘s future, and despite the ideological investment in the idea of African unity, there are few issues on the African governance agenda that seem to be more insulated from the input of ordinary people. In this sense, the APRM could play an enhanced role in at least three ways: 1. 2. 3. The APRM could also position itself to become the trade policy review body for the CFTA that is currently under negotiation. The APRM has experience in policy and governance review; as a result, it is well placed to offer this service. However, the implications of such a critical and enormous responsibility on the capacity of the APRM Secretariat needs to be considered and catered for well in advance. Bottleneck 5: Lack of industrialisation and low value addition The APRM inquiries could be used to assist in raising awareness of the importance of regional integration and its progress. The APRM‘s consultation process is one forum for doing this: a good in-country media strategy can shine light on important but underdiscussed issues through interviews, commissioned opinion pieces and so on. Shorter, easier to read, documents produced by the APRM (possibly its proposed Knowledge Hub) focusing on themes – in this case on regional integration – could provide policy makers, opinion formers and ordinary citizens with information on the envisaged benefits of regional integration, thereby stimulating public conversations. The APRM could also be useful as a means of assembling data and reporting on the progress of regional integration – maintaining a database of which countries have signed agreements and so on – which would enable journalists and researchers to keep abreast of these developments, and thereby to popularise it to the African public. This information could be collated by participating governments and submitted to the APRM Secretariat, which could in turn upload it onto its website. This would make it easily accessible to all free of charge at the point of use. The APR Forum could be used as an additional platform to press countries on meeting their integration commitments. It is not always apparent that all African countries treat integration with the seriousness it deserves. The APRM could help to elevate it. This could be done in two ways. The first is through using information in the Country Review Reports (CRRs) to highlight what is being done and what still needs to be done. Making journalists and academics aware of the storehouse of information that the CRRs contain is necessary so that they will use them to write about and popularise regional integration. The second is through the meetings of the APR Forum, at which heads of state and government need to challenge one another to move regional integration forward. Concept Moving Africa into a high value-adding path is important if it is to generate the wealth and opportunities that it will need as its population grows and urbanises. The intellectual case that Africa cannot achieve broad-based and sustainable development without industrialisation has been made repeatedly in the academic and institutional literature, the latest being UNECA‘s 2016 report on Transformative Industrial Policy for Africa.123 The political leadership on the continent has also accepted the need to diversify away from extractives and primary agricultural commodities. Indeed, President Museveni draws attention to the failure of the continent to use its considerable natural resources to drive value addition. This section is related to Bottlenecks no. 2 (interference with the private sector), no. 4 (fragmented markets, market access and expansion), no. 5 (lack of industrialisation and low value addition), no. 7 (underdevelopment of human resources), no.9 (underdevelopment of agriculture), and no. 9 (underdevelopment of the services centre). What the APRM does about lack of industrialisation and low value addition The APRM addresses this matter in the EGM thematic area, under Objective 1 on design and implementation of economic policies for sustainable development and, more specifically, where Question 2 asks: ―what sectoral economic policies has your country developed and implemented to promote economic growth and sustainable development in the past 5-10 years and what has been their effectiveness?‖ 123 32 See UNECA, Transformative Industrial Policy for Africa (2016).