CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION: THE APRM PROCESS AND ITS IMPLEMENTATION IN BENIN __________________________________________________________________________ CHAPTER ONE 1. INTRODUCTION: THE APRM PROCESS AND ITS IMPLEMENTATION IN BENIN “The mandate of the African Peer Review Mechanism is to ensure that policies and practices of participating States are in conformity with the agreed political, economic and corporate governance values, codes and standards. The APRM is a mutually agreed mechanism for self-evaluation of countries by Heads of State and Government of the participating countries.” NEPAD/HSGIC/03-2003/APRM/MOU/Annex II 1.1 The APRM and its implementation 1. During the Inaugural Summit of the AU, held in Durban, South Africa, in July 2002, the NEPAD Implementation Committee adopted the Declaration on Democracy, Political, Economic and Corporate Governance. In a bid to improve the quality of governance in Africa, the 6th Summit of the Heads of State and Government Implementation Committee (HSGIC) of NEPAD, held in March 2003 in Abuja, Nigeria, endorsed the Durban Declaration and adopted the MOU on the APRM. Subsequently, the main documents outlining the core principles, processes and objectives of the APRM, including the APRM Base Document, the document on Organisation and Processes (O & P) of the APRM, as well as the document on Objectives, Standards, Criteria and Indicators for the APRM (OSCI Document) were also adopted by the heads of state. 2. Member states of the AU may voluntarily accede to the APRM, a mechanism for self-evaluation by Africans for Africans. The main objective of the APRM is to ensure that the policies and practices of participating states conform to the values, codes and standards of political, economic and corporate governance and socioeconomic development contained in the Declaration on Democracy, Political, Economic and Corporate Governance. The ultimate goal is, therefore, to encourage participating states to adopt policies, standards and practices that lead to political stability, high economic growth, sustainable development and accelerated subregional and continental integration. The APRM intends to achieve this goal by sharing the experiences of successful and best practices and consolidating them. Thereafter, it hopes to build competence by identifying the deficiencies in, and assessing the requisites for, capacity building. 32