African Union Good governance is, among other things, characterized by appropriation, participation, responsiveness, accountability and sustainability. It is therefore internationally considered as the underlying conceptualization of the broad-based sustainable socio-economic development. Indeed, the promotion and acceleration of a broad-based sustainable socio-economic development will require a top-down and bottom-up approach in the formulation and implementation of policies and strategies geared towards reducing poverty and improving the overall well-being of the people. All stakeholders should own the whole process and actively participate in the promotion of self-reliance and capacity building for self-sustaining development. To this effect, the country should first rely on its own resources and allocate them wisely for development programmes with particular emphasis on inter-related key priority sectors such as agriculture, environment, health, education and infrastructure. Indeed, with a sharp population increase, land becoming less fertile, the disastrous overexploitation of water and forest resources and low rainfall in most parts of Africa, there has been increasing poverty and the downward spiral of underdevelopment. The poorer you become, the less you eat with less energy to work and you do not produce enough and the poorer you become. In order to shift from the pitfall of underdevelopment and take-off, there should be a clean break in the vicious circle. The broad-based sustainable socio-economic development together with its four objectives constitutes the pathway if policies and strategies are carefully formulated and implemented with a monitoring and evaluation system to measure the progress and take necessary corrective measures before it is too late. To this effect, adequate human resources should be identified and developed in each priority sector and in each discipline area in order to, among other things, engage all stakeholders individually and collectively in the whole process. In addition adequate financial resources should be mobilized first at national level then at regional and international levels to fill the needed gap. To ensure equity in the process, most disadvantaged people should be enabled to enhance their knowledge and manage their livelihoods, especially when development initiatives affect their lives. To this extent, the sustainable socio-economic development component of the APRM assessments is undertaken under a series of standards and codes, and objectives that are able to provide insight on the progress that African countries are making in terms of reducing inequalities, poverty and hunger through improvement of agriculture production, food security, environment protection and affordable access to natural resources and basic services as development is about the well-being of present people without compromising the life of future generation. 6.2 Standards and codes This paragraph will update the list of standards and codes related to the broad-based sustainable socio-economic development and distribute them across the four new objectives. It will then assess the level of their signature, ratification and enactment. In addition, this paragraph will try to understand constraints to the adoption of some standards and codes, enforcement mechanisms and reporting structures in place. 70