CONCEPT NOTE Regional Economic Communities and the

African Public Service Ministers’ Programme

Paper prepared for the Conference of Ministers of Public/Civil Service, October 2008

CONTENTS Acronym Executive Summary Introduction Background and Context: 2005–2008 RECs and the 5th Pan-African Ministers Meeting Revisited RECs and the African Ministers Programme: Achievements and Challenges The Capacity Challenge The Governance Challenge: Peer Review Quo Vadis RECs and the Public Service Revisited: An Update Advancing the Ministers’ Programme: Scenarios In Search of the Way Forward Recommendations

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ACRONYMS ACBF African Capacity-Building Foundation ADB African Development Bank AEC African Economic Community AMDIN African Management Development Institutes Network APRM African Peer Review Mechanism AU African Union AUG African Union Government AUSC African Union Service Commission CEN-AD Community of Sahel-Saharan States CESPAM Centre of Specialisation and Public Administration and Management COMESA Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa DBSA Development Bank of Southern Africa DRC Democratic Republic of Congo EAC East African Community EALA East African Legislative Assembly ECA Economic Commission for Africa ECOWAS Economic Community of West African States EU European Union FTAs Free Trade Areas IBSA India-Brazil-South Africa Trilateral Dialogue Forum IGAD Inter-Governmental Authority for Development ISDSC Inter-State Defence and Security Committee ISPDC Inter-State Politics and Diplomacy Committee NCAUAs National Commissions on African Union Affairs NEPAD New Partnership for Africa’s Development OAU Organisation of African Unity OPDSC Organ on Politics, Defence and Security Cooperation PCRD Post-Conflict Reconstruction and Development RECs Regional Economic Communities RICs Regional Integration Communities RISDP Regional Indicative Strategic PlanSADC Southern African Development Community SNCs SADC National Committees UMA Arab Maghreb Union

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This paper sets out to conceptualise a triangular framework of strategic interaction

between the Regional Economic Communities (RECs), the African Union (AU) for which

the RECs serve as its regional pillars of governance, and the African Public Service

Ministers’ Programme. As an exercise, this entails examining progress in the

strengthening and rationalising of the RECs at a time when the first tripartite SADC-

COMESA-EAC summit is set to get underway in October 2008; an event which would

provide an opportunity for the Ministers’ Programme to advance the African Public

Service Charter within a context addressing the harmonising of regional integration

initiatives in Eastern and Southern Africa. In this vein, this paper’s aim is to review the

proposals, initiatives and activities pertaining to the RECs within this triangular context

of relationships that emerged to address the goals and objectives of the 5th Pan-African

Conference of Ministers of Public Service and Administration and relate them to the

need for devising an action plan for the next five years which will be the focus the

upcoming 6th Pan-African Public Service Ministers’ Conference.

Hence, this paper provides an overview of the status of the RECs insofar as they

pertain to defining their role in advancing the African Public Service Ministers’

Programme (hereafter referred to as the African Ministers’ Programme). It also reviews

proposals concerning the RECs made in terms of the 5th Pan-African Conference of

Ministers of Public Service in conjunction with reviewing the outcome of such

consultations as the SADC Governance Consultative Forum of July 2007 and the

Ministers OF Public Service/Civil Service Ministerial Workshop on Post-Conflict

Reconstruction and Development on 8 and 9 April 2008. Revisiting these consultations

pinpoints achievements that have been made over this period between Pan-African

Public Service Ministerial conferences in regard to the remaining challenges that must

be addressed as the transfer gets underway in launching the 6th Pan-African

Conference.

4

The African Ministers’ Programme’s focus on developing a public service and

administration relationship with the RECs grows out of its interaction with the NEPAD

Capacity Building Initiative and the fact that the implementation of NEPAD, as the AU’s

continental economic development blueprint, is intended to be implemented through the

RECs. This necessitated a closer look at the relationship between African public service

management, and how this sector is governed, and the RECs. In the run-up to the 5th

Pan-African Ministers’ Conference it was found that there had been little documented

interaction and/or mutual influence between African public service and administration

ministries and related institutions and regional economic communities regarding NEPAD

implementation.

At the time of this realisation and the undertaking of a study to explore how this absence

of interaction could be redressed, the RECs themselves were coming under increasing

scrutiny in terms of their capacity to facilitate the kind of project development and

implementation required in order to advance the developmental objectives of NEPAD

which centred heavily on building the continent’s infrastructure as the foundation for

accelerating regional cooperation and integration. Moreover, the proliferation of RECs

accompanied by regionally overlapping country memberships and duplication of

developmental agendas begged the ever-pressing question of how to rationalise the

RECs into the AU’s five-region template of continental governance. Since a survey of

the relationship between the RECs, NEPAD and African public service and

administration undertaken in 2005, more recent findings have been forthcoming in the

wake of the AU Summit Grand Debate on a “United States of Africa” resulting in the

Accra Declaration of July 2007 which re-emphasised the centrality of the RECs in any

ongoing process of transforming the AU into an African Union Government (AUG). The

very first priority articulated in the Accra Declaration is the urgency to “rationalize and

strengthen the Regional Economic Communities” while a ministerial committee was

established to, among other things, define “the relationship between the Union

Government and the Regional Economic Communities (RECs)”. The Accra Declaration

and the follow-ups to it, including the AU Audit that it mandated along with an

5

investigation and reporting back of the ministerial Committee of Ten on an AUG, gives

added urgency to an African Ministers’ Programme focus on the RECs.

In revisiting the achievements of the African Ministers’ Programme under the 5th Pan-

African Ministers’ Conference, new ground was broken in the establishment of a

dialogue and working relationship with the Development Bank of Southern Africa

(DBSA), the convening of the Expert Seminar on the SADC Governance Forum from 2

to 4 July 2007 and the Ministerial Workshop on Post-Conflict Reconstruction and

Development that occurred on 8 and 9 April 2008 in Burundi. These consultations re-

emphasised the capacity development challenges facing the RECs and the African

Ministers’ Programme in meeting them. Another challenge has arisen in the possibilities

presented by the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) as a potential good

governance mechanism for giving impetus to transforming RECs into eventual Regional

Integration Communities (RICs). These observations inform one of two possible

scenarios that future direction of the REC dimension of the African Ministers’

Programme might take: the first scenario is as an institution-building path to

regionalising public service and administration which can emanate either from the AU in

Addis Ababa or from REC initiative in the regions; and the second scenario is billed as

an Institutional Networking Coordination model for regionalising public service and

administration with the AU/REC system, including the ECOWAS option of establishing

regional conferences of ministers of public service. Both have their strengths and

weaknesses, while, in the short term, the second scenario is the most cost effective

(though the second option of the first scenario might also have its cost-savings) in terms

of not requiring new structures to be introduced into an already cost-burdened system.

RECOMMENDATIONS

From the forgoing, what follows are a few recommendations pertaining to priorities

associated with the observations and scenarios for effecting a way forward.

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• In anticipation of the October tripartite summit between SADC, COMESA and

EAC, the Bureau should consider introducing within the summit agenda the

possibility of a tripartite public service and administration coordinating structure to

facilitate establishing a Tripartite Conference of Ministers of Public Service

covering these three RECs. Alternatively, the African Public Service Charter

could be introduced. Either or both would facilitate the harmonisation of

integration programme goals as envisioned by the October tripartite summit.

• In the short term, the African Ministers’ Programme should seek to build upon the

SADC Consultation of 2007 to establish the public service consultative forum

envisioned by that exercise, accompanied by similar efforts at establishing public

service consultative forums in other regions. The fact that COMESA participated

in the SADC Consultation suggest the possibilities for a SADC/COMESA public

service consultative forum for Southern Africa and an EAC/COMESA public

service consultative forum for East Africa whereas for West, Central and

Northern Africa, the establishment of similar forums may be more

straightforward. Such forums are critical to the need for perpetuating an ongoing

discourse on African public service and governance reform and capacity building

at the regional level of African governance.

• High-priority agenda items for such consultations should include how to effect a

cost-effective networking framework for advancing public service and

administration concerns within the REC agenda interrelated with how such an

agenda can help the RECs and institutions like the ADB and DBSA address the

capacity development challenges of the RECs.

• The formalisation of such regional consultative forums should also incorporate a

regional PCRD component in an ongoing discourse aimed at addressing the

regional stability challenges posed by given “conflict states” and/or states

undergoing post-conflict stabilisation.

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• Because of the cross-cutting nature of ministries and departments of public

service and administration, it is important that there be instituted an ongoing

dialogue and working relationship at national level between such

ministries/departments and ministries/departments of foreign affairs (or economic

ministries in those countries where these form the REC focal points). Such

collaboration will be critical to charting a public service and administration REC

agenda.

• The Bureau should consider undertaking a study of the IBSA sectoral working

group format in terms of how it might become adaptable and be applied to

activating AU/REC/NEPAD technical committees, with a public service

technical/sectoral dimension, either as a mechanism on its own or in conjunction

with activating REC/NEPAD national committees or national NEPAD focal points.

• Of equal priority, the Bureau should encourage other RECs to study the

ECOWAS model of a regional conference of ministers of public service and how

the ECOWAS approach might be adapted and/or replicated to other regional

circumstances. This should include exchanges between ECOWAS and other

RECs in exploring such possibilities.

• There is a need to consider establishing a networked Centre on African

Governance Reform as a virtual structure (not a new institution) linking already

existing non-governmental regional and continental bodies to formulate and

implement an ongoing research programme, one that would facilitate longer-term

scenario planning on inter-African issues of public service management and

administration import. This would be as a means of ensuring that the African

Ministers’ Programme keeps pace with the fluid process and politics of change in

the AU/REC system and, indeed, becomes a proactive participant in influencing

and shaping the direction of where African integration at the continental and

regional level is headed.

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• As a corollary to establishing a African governance reform research network, the

African Ministers’ Programme may also want to consider encouraging the

establishment of an African Integration Forum as a civil society initiative for

promoting non-governmental and private sector dialogue with governments on a

broad range of regional cooperation and integration issues in Africa and

Southern Africa and, also, to participate in monitoring and evaluation activities

pertaining to continental and regional integration initiatives.

• A closely related concern, in follow-up to the above recommendation, is

consideration of how the APRM might be regionalised and adapted as a good

governance accession tool for advancing regional integration in a changing

AU/REC system.

• The Bureau should consider having the 6th Pan-African Conference of Ministers

of Public Service and Administration study and deliberate on the efficacy of

having their respective governments establish ministries (and departments) of

inter-African cooperation and integration pursuant to establishing a council of

ministers that would work with the AU Executive Council in addressing the

governance as opposed to the purely foreign policy-diplomatic agenda with a

view toward embedding the mainstreaming of the African Charter and the

Ministers’ Programme at national, regional and continental agenda.

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INTRODUCTION This paper sets out to conceptualise a triangular framework of strategic interaction

between the Regional Economic Communities (RECs), the African Union (AU) for which

the RECs serve as its regional pillars of governance, and the African Public Service

Ministers’ Programme. As an exercise, this entails examining progress in the

strengthening and rationalising of the RECs at a time when the first tripartite SADC-

COMESA-EAC summit is set to get underway in October 2008; an event which would

provide an opportunity for the Ministers’ Programme to advance the African Public

Service Charter within a context addressing the harmonising of regional integration

initiatives in Eastern and Southern Africa. Within this vein, this paper’s aim is to review

the proposals, initiatives and activities pertaining to the RECs within this triangular

context of relationships that emerged to address the goals and objectives of the 5th Pan-

African Conference of Ministers of Public Service and Administration and relate them to

the need for devising an action plan for the next five years which will be the focus the

upcoming 6th Pan-African Public Service Ministers’ Conference.

Hence, this paper provides an overview of the status of the RECs insofar as they

pertain to defining their role in advancing the African Public Service Ministers’

Programme. It also reviews proposals concerning the RECs made in terms of the 5th

Pan-African Conference of Ministers of Public Service in conjunction with reviewing the

outcome of such consultations as the SADC Governance Consultative Forum of July

2007 and the Ministers for Public Service/Civil Service Ministerial Workshop on Post-

Conflict Reconstruction and Development of April 2008. Revisiting these consultations

highlights achievements that have been made over this period between Pan-African

Public Service Ministerial conferences in regard to the remaining challenges that must

be addressed as the transfer gets underway in launching the 6th Pan-African

Conference.

Critically assessing these challenges informs alternative scenarios on a way forward

accompanied by recommendations intended to address how the African Ministers’

Programme can become an engine of governance reform and public service delivery at

10

the level of the RECs with the aim of strengthening the institutional architecture of the

inter-African system with the AU at its apex. How this relates to the Ministers’

Programme, which interacts closely with the demands of post-conflict reconstruction

and development, the Capacity Building Initiative of the New Partnership for Africa’s

Development (NEPAD) and the African Management Development Institutes Network

AMDIN) is in meeting the challenge of devising a long-term implementation strategy that

delineates a role for the RECs in relationship to governance at both a continental and a

country level. Indeed, it is the NEPAD Capacity Building Initiative that highlighted the

importance of defining a strategic role for the RECs in the Ministers’ Programme given

the role that was defined by the AU for the RECs as the regional pillars for rolling out

the NEPAD developmental strategy for the continent.

BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT: 2005–2008 The African Ministers’ Programme’s focus on developing a public service and

administration relationship with the RECs grows out of its interaction with the NEPAD

Capacity Building Initiative and the fact that the implementation of NEPAD, as the AU’s

continental economic development blueprint, is intended to be implemented through the

RECs. This necessitated a closer look at the relationship between African public service

management, and how this sector is governed, and the RECs. In the run-up to the 5th

Pan-African Ministers’ Conference, it was found that there had been little documented

interaction and/or mutual influence between African public service and administration

ministries and related institutions and regional economic communities regarding NEPAD

implementation.1 At the time of this realisation and the undertaking of a study to explore

how this absence of interaction could be redressed, the RECs themselves were coming

under increasing scrutiny in terms of their capacity to facilitate the kind of project

development and implementation required in order to advance the developmental

objectives of NEPAD which centred heavily on building the continent’s infrastructure as

the foundation for accelerating regional cooperation and integration. Moreover, the

proliferation of RECs accompanied by regionally overlapping country memberships and

1 Department of Public Service and Administration, South Africa . Draft Background Paper: Regional Economic

Communities, NEPAD and Implications for African Public Service and Administration. Johannesburg, 2005, p. 29.

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duplication of developmental agendas begged the ever-pressing question of how to

rationalise the RECs into the AU’s five-region template of continental governance.

The RECs, in their diversity, also reflected considerable unevenness in their strengths,

weaknesses and performance within their respective regions with some, such as the

Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), enjoying considerable

executive autonomy at the secretariat level accompanied by member states that gave

priority to establishing NEPAD focal points and/or ministries devoted specifically to

NEPAD and/or regional cooperation and integration.2 Others, like the Southern African

Development Community (SADC) were seen to have relatively weak secretariats with

insufficient autonomy in relation to heads of state to be able to take project-related

initiatives on their own or to engage donors decisively at a decision-making level.3 The

domestication and mainstreaming of REC agendas at the national level of member

states was also weak to non-existent although, at least on paper, provision has been

made – as in the case of SADC – for national REC/NEPAD committees. Moreover,

there was a lack of an effective working relationship between RECs and the AU, let

alone problems of mainstreaming the NEPAD programme into the agenda of the RECs.

Many of these observations anticipated more recent findings regarding the RECs and

their relationship with the AU which underline the timeliness of the current effort by the

African Ministers’ Programme to generate greater momentum in its interaction with the

RECs at the level of public service management and development administration. Since

a survey of the relationship between the RECs, NEPAD and African public service and

administration undertaken in 2005, more recent findings have been forthcoming in the

wake of the AU Summit Grand Debate on a “United States of Africa” resulting in the

Accra Declaration of July 2007 which re-emphasised the centrality of the RECs in any

ongoing process of transforming the AU into an African Union Government (AUG).4

2 Ibid., p. 9–10. 3 Ibid., p. 10. 4 See: Francis Kornegay. The Regional Dimension to the United States of Africa Grand Debate. Johannesburg,

Centre for Policy Studies, March 2007 (Policy Brief 43), p 8.

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The very first priority articulated in the Accra Declaration is the urgency to “rationalize

and strengthen the Regional Economic Communities” while a ministerial committee was

established to, among other things, define “the relationship between the Union

Government and the Regional Economic Communities (RECs)”.5 The Accra Declaration

and the follow-ups to it, including the AU Audit that it mandated along with an

investigation and reporting back of the ministerial Committee of Ten on an AUG, gives

added urgency to an African Ministers’ Programme focus on the RECs given, not only

the added concern about the effective institutional workings of the AU and its organs,

but the fact that there is an ongoing momentum to further transform the AU, not fully

through its transition from the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), into a more clearly

defined continental union government. This process, however it unfolds, further

enhances the role of the RECs as indicated in the following “Report of the Ministerial

Committee on the Union Government”:

• “It was generally acknowledged that the Accra Declaration had mentioned the

process of rationalizing and strengthening of the RECs and the harmonization of

their activities, as constituting one of the steps to attaining Union Government.

• The Committee further agreed that the process of the rationalization,

harmonization and implementation of the programmes of the RECs, should not

affect the process of establishing the Union Government in the agreed domains

of competence.”6

The Union Government deliberations, futuristically ambitious as they may appear,

nevertheless, presage much of the current ongoing preoccupations over the urgency

attached to strengthening the AU system overall, including the functioning of the RECs

and their interaction with the AU and its organs. Here, a reality check is provided by the

findings of the AU Audit Report in the review of the institutional capacity constraints of

this entire governing infrastructure. With regard to the RECs, the following observations

are made:

5 ”Accra Declaration,” Accra Mail, 4 July 2007. The Assembly of the Union, meeting at its 9th Ordinary Session in

Accra, Ghana, from 1 to 3 July 2007. 6 Report of the Ministerial Committee on the Union Government, EX.CL/390 (XII)-b. pp. 5–6.

13

• As instruments for promoting socio-economic development, legitimacy and

sustainability, many RECs have not achieved their “fundamental milestones

within the envisaged timeframes”.

• There is a lack of convergence among RECs in terms of the Abuja Treaty goal of

an eventual African Economic Community (AEC) accompanied by an approach

to integration based more on deadlines than concrete achievements.

• Several RECs, including ECOWAS, the Intergovernmental Development

Authority (IGAD), the Arab Maghreb Union (UMA) and the Community of Sahel-

Saharan States (CEN-SAD) have yet to establish Free Trade Areas (FTAs) while

others such as SADC, the East African Community (EAC) and the Common

Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) have indicative strategic

plans to move toward common markets as early as 2015, 2009 and 2014

respectively.

• While the AU, aspiring to five RECs, currently recognises eight such RECs, there

are several more such entities that exist to which member states have acceded

to that are not recognised by the AU and which, therefore, compound the

proliferation and overlapping membership problem.

• REC proliferation has weakened the logic of regional cooperation caused by the

irrational configurations of some RECs.

• Member states belonging to two or more RECs cause inconsistencies in focus

and commitment, compounded by competition for bilateral donor funds, causing

national interests to trump pan-African ideals as member states act contrary to

agreed principles and commitments made at regional level.

• Some RECs, such as ECOWAS and the EAC have their own regional

parliaments while others do not, while the “role of the Pan-African Parliament

also needs to be reviewed in parallel to the existing regional parliaments”.

• Finally, there is the ineffectiveness of the AU/RECs’ Coordination Committee set

up under a 1998 OAU Protocol (though there is a new Protocol on AU/REC

relations adopted in 2007) to provide policy orientation and monitoring of the

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RECs which is seen as a “contributing factor to the challenges that beset the

delay of the regional integration process”.7

Recommendations include:

• “Member states commit to integration by implementing decisions at national,

regional and continental levels.

• National mechanisms such as proposed National Commissions on AU Affairs

(NCAUAs) accompanied by instruments for the mainstreaming and

‘domestication’ of REC decisions at national level (i.e. ECOWAS national Nepad

Focal Points or SADC National Committees) should be established.

• The Assembly should regularly review the progress of harmonisation in line with

agreed plans.

• The Assembly should adhere to its Decision AU/Dec.112 (VII) that recognises

only 8 RECs.

• The RECs should fast track the objective of creating an African Common Market.

• The Coordinating Committee should effectively present an annual progress

report to the Assembly of the AU on the activities of the RECs.

• Member states may need to consider reviewing their Multiple Memberships to the

RECs.”8

The upshot of these assessments and recommendations is that the RECs, although

officially part and parcel of the AU’s inter-African governing system, are completely

autonomous, sovereign entities driven by their sovereign member states. They can take

initiatives on their own either individually or in conjunction with other RECs with which

they may establish cooperative, coordinating relationships as is, in fact, intended under

the Abuja Treaty. The tripartite coordination between SADC, COMESA and the EAC,

7 The High Level Panel. Audit of the African Union, Addis Ababa, December 2007. This is a summary of findings of

Chapter 9: “The African Union and its Relationship with the Regional Economic Communities”, pp. 113–138. See particularly: Assessment of structures.-activities of the RECs. – progress towards harmonisation and rationalisation.

8 The High Level Panel. Executive Summary: Report of the High Level Panel of the Audit of the African Unit. Addis Ababa, December 2007. Highlights recommendations on RECs and on “Impact of the AUC on the policies, resources allocation and regulatory frameworks of member states”, p. 13 and p. 21.

15

where, especially in terms of SADC-COMESA relations, there was rivalry, is a positive

case in point and augurs well for eventual rationalisation of Eastern and Southern

African regions. Overall, however, there is a question of the cost-effectiveness and

sustainability of some of the remedies offered in the Audit report that are of direct

relevance to embedding public service and administrative institutional capacity in the

AU system.

For example, while the establishment of a recommended AU Service Commission

(AUSC) seems a good idea in terms of the programmatic thrust of the African Ministers’

Programme (and would have responsibility for recruitment, making appointments and

promotions and enforcing discipline while setting service conditions and grading of

posts under the staff rules and regulations of the AU), the cost-effectiveness of such a

new structure raises serious questions about how realistic such reforms are given the

limited financial capacity of the AU. Moreover, there would be an impetus for the RECs

to encourage establishing similar service commissions which would similarly raise

questions of institutional sustainability at regional levels of the AU system.

The purpose of the foregoing is to place in context the political terrain and environment

within which REC-public service and administration deliberation leading up to the 6th

Pan-African Conference compared to where these issues stood at the time of the 5th

Pan-African Conference. This is also important in establishing the increasing relevance of the African Ministers’ Programme to the emerging continental discourse on inter-African governance and integration. This, in turn, provides a

fitting basis for revisiting the proposals and recommendations regarding REC-public

service and administration relations tabled at the 5th Pan-African Conference which, in

many respects, anticipated some of the findings flowing from the inquiries set in train by

the Accra Declaration with regard to the RECs.

RECs AND THE 5TH PAN-AFRICAN MINISTERS MEETING REVISITED Apart from the observation that the African public service and administration sector has

tended to remain on the periphery of the most pressing issues animating the activities of

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the RECs, their member states and NEPAD, many of the challenges that have most

recently been unveiled in various audits and assessment were foreshadowed in some of

the findings that informed the deliberation on the RECs at the 5th Pan-African

Conference. These included:

• inadequate coordination and communication between RECs and member

governments on NEPAD projects and priorities;

• lack of adequate coordination and communication between governments

belonging to the same REC or RECs on NEPAD projects and priorities;

• little of no coordination and communication on NEPAD projects and priorities

between RECs which may often have overlapping country memberships;

• in many instances, insufficient authority at the executive-secretariat level to

proactively engage with REC/NEPAD development partners as well as with the

political leadership of REC member governments in undertaking and executing

projects and in mobilising their financing;

• discrepancies between an REC’s and/or a member government’s NEPAD project

commitment and the actual development of that project to ensure fast-tracking for

implementable investment by prospective partners over a 6 to 18 month period;

• discrepancies between levels of funding for NEPAD projects and actual projects

that have been developed to the proposal stage for absorbing the funding that is

available;

• sorting out the politics of protocol involving NEPAD initiative between RECs and

REC member governments to ensure REC ownership of NEPAD initiatives;

• lack of, in many instances, governmental NEPAD focal points (or inadequate

focal points) that could serve as interfaces for coordination and communication

between an REC member government with the REC to which it belongs and with

another government belonging to the same REC; and

• little or no non-governmental and/or private sector stakeholder mobilisation and

engagement in REC activities and in NEPAD projects.9

9 Department of Public Service and Administration, South Africa, Op Cit. pp. 18–19.

17

Furthermore, in light of the foregoing and more recent evaluations, the observation

reflected in the 2003–2005 edition of the NEPAD Governance and Public Administration

Programme is as apt now as then with regard to issues of the institutional management

of developmental agendas: the fact that “existing analysis of reform efforts in Africa

reveal that substantive governance problems emanate from failures at policy and

coordination levels of government. Enhancing the capacity of the centre to engage in

active coordination, to generate appropriate policy and to monitor and evaluate

programmes is essential for regional development and for the success of NEPAD.”10

(Emphasis added.)

In many respects, this exercise, in preparation for the 5th Pan-African African

Conference, was an essential awareness-raising step that was a precondition to

beginning to seriously address the challenges of public service and administration at the

continental and regional levels of African governance. The problem facing the African

public service and administration sector viz-à-viz the RECs reflected more broadly the

status quo of departments of foreign affairs being, in the main, the sole interface

between governments within the multilateral sphere of inter-governmental relations that

comprise the role of the RECs in the African governance chain. Here, deliberations

leading up to and during the 5th Pan-African Conference and its aftermath has managed

to break new ground in expanding REC engagement beyond the purely foreign affairs

domain, especially at the level of engaging developmental institutional partners involved

in working with the RECs to facilitate NEPAD projects and initiatives. Thus, the Bureau

of the African Ministers’ Programme followed up on the recommendation that a dialogue

be initiated with the NEPAD and REC secretariats, and “facilitating partnering

institutions” like the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA) and the African

Development Bank (ADB) with the aim of developing a long-term and sustained

engagement with all stakeholders in the REC/NEPAD/member state triad with the

objective steadily strengthening regional cooperation in terms of advancing and

enhancing NEPAD implementation. The initiation of deliberations between the Bureau

and DBSA and with SADC aimed at mainstreaming a public service and administration

10 Nepad Governance and Public Administration Programme (no date), p. 35. Refers to the 2003–2005 programme.

18

agenda within the regional cooperation and integration agenda can be viewed as a

major step toward bringing the African public service sector from the periphery and into

a closer relationship of interaction with the RECs.

RECs AND THE AFRICAN MINISTERS’ PROGRAMME: ACHIEVEMENTS AND CHALLENGES

Post-5th Pan-African Conference: The SADC Consultation

With regard to redressing the peripheral status of the public service and administration

sector within the AU/RECs/NEPAD agenda, the Expert Seminar on the SADC

Governance Forum convened from 2 to 4 July 2007 represented another important

benchmark in following up on some of the recommendations informing the 5th Pan-

African Conference. 11The SADC Consultation, first of all, provided a platform for

undertaking a comparative analysis of the RECs capabilities with regard to NEPAD. Its

deliberations were instructive in highlighting several areas of concerns. Among these

were issues of harmonisation, the capacity challenges facing the RECs, their lack of

instruments for monitoring and evaluation, the weakness of linkages between RECs and

member states and the need to “think of a ‘bottom to top’” solution to many issues rather

than a “top-down”, once again, highlighting the largely inoperable SADC National

Committees (or SNCs).12

The critical recurring issue of capacity at the REC level emerged during the SADC

Consultation, resulting in a number of lessons emerging from a review of “institutional

and collaborative relationships with RECs’ capacity development”:

• There was a need to develop a “shared understanding of capacity development”

which is often confused with training when, in fact, it involves a much broader

process of institution-building.

• There is a need to focus on deeper causes of problems and find essential points

of leverage.

11 Department of Public Service and Administration, South Africa. Report: Expert Seminar on SADC Governance

Consultative Forum from 2 to 4 July 2007, p. 2. 12 Ibid., pp. 5–6. Summary highlight of “Overview of the sectoral working groups in SADC, DFA.”

19

• Capacity efforts, reflecting the first lesson, require a “systematic approach, rather

than an ad-hoc event”.

• There is a need to be aware of hidden agendas and competing priorities often

reflecting that “political considerations are more important than technical aspects”

of a capacity initiative.

• The need to ensure that capacity initiatives are strategically rooted in terms of

facilitating linkages of the functioning of an institutional system with its overall

strategy.

• There must be a consideration of the level of organisational maturity which will

have a bearing on determining levels of institutional readiness and absorption

capacity for capacity building interventions in terms of suitability, feasibility and

acceptability of such efforts.13

With particular regard to SADC public sector capacity strengthening efforts, two were

seen as particularly noteworthy: an initiative emerging out of the Human Resource

Development Unit of the SADC Secretariat, though it was pointed out there was minimal

content relating to public service issues as such; and establishment of the Centre of

Specialisation and Public Administration and Management (CESPAM) through a

mandate of the SADC Executive Council for capacity-building in public management

and administration.14 CESPAM appears particularly promising as the basis of an

embedded SADC public service and administration programme that could be examined

for possible replication by other RECs – or have its terms of reference expanded to not

be limited to SADC but to address other REC capacity building challenges in public

management and administration.

The SADC Consultation was also a valuable start at initiating the kind of institutional

dialogue needed between the African public service sector, the RECs and other

development partners by not limiting the dialogue exclusively to SADC but bringing

COMESA into the discussion as well. Indeed, this presages closer tripartite

collaboration between SADC, COMESA and the East African Community (EAC) which

13 Ibid., p. 10. “Review of institutional and collaborative relationships with REC’s for capacity development”. 14 Ibid., p. 13.

20

are holding their first Tripartite Summit in October with a particular emphasis on

harmonising integration programme.15 Seen from the vantage-point of advancing the

African Charter, a tripartite SADC-COMESA-EAC public service and administration

consultation could be contemplated. In any case, in terms of the 2007 SADC

Consultation, COMESA’s capacity building focus is more targeted toward the trade

sector, focusing on trade and trade-related negotiations involving other regional and

global organisations, including its trilateral relationship with the East African Community

as well as SADC. COMESA also has a number of partners in the terrain of resource

mobilisation although it struggles to ensure that member states make their mandatory

contributions. Like SADC, it does have a parliamentary forum as well as a civil society

forum while its Council of Ministers is supported by technical and consultative

committees as a means of further reinforcing capacity. In spite of the overlap in

membership with SADC and the EAC, at an operational level, there is useful

cooperation and good work reflected in the area of infrastructural development.

In summary, the SADC Consultation appears to have been a good start at initiating

what should become an ongoing dialogue between the region’s public service and

administration sector within the African Ministers’ Programme and SADC and perhaps

COMESA and the EAC as well in terms of the emerging tripartite dimension of REC

collaboration between these three groupings. Should future follow-up consultations

hone in more specifically on targeted issues of capacity-building in terms of building a

cooperatively regional public management and administration dimension to SADC, the

consultative forum vehicle will have earned its relevance. What is not clear as of yet are

what future consultative follow-ups are contemplated and where these might lead in

terms of not only placing the African Ministers’ Programme on the SADC agenda but in

embedding a dedicated public service and administration complement to SADC

governance.

15 Final Communique of 28th Summit of SADC Heads of State and Government. 17 August 2008, p. 4.

21

The Ministerial Workshop on Post-Conflict Reconstruction and Development

One of the key elements of the 2004–2008 African Ministers’ Programme is post-conflict

reconstruction and development (PCRD). The programme aims to build strategic

stability in those regions of the continent struggling to overcome the devastation of

protracted conflict and, as a major component of that, rebuild state governing

capacities. It is an element in the African Ministers’ Programme that reflects ongoing

efforts at post-conflict recovery in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Burundi,

Sudan, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Hence, the importance of the consultation that the

Bureau convened at Club Lac Tanganyika in Bujumbura, Burundi on 8 and 9 April 2008.

Commissions on “Building State Capacity in Post-Conflict Countries” and on the “Role

of Partners in Post-Conflict Reconstruction and Development” were the featured

activities. Although the post-conflict reconstruction and development emphasis is a

Ministers’ Programme element in its own right, apart from the issue of AU/REC

interaction with the African public service and administration agenda, it nevertheless

has a direct bearing on an evolving REC governing capacity in effecting regional

cooperation as a dimension of overcoming the instabilities of inter- and intra-state

African conflicts.

The Bujumbura commission on “Building State Capacity” addressed the following key

areas:

• building institutions and structures of the public service;

• developing human resource capacity for and within the public service;

• support for institutional reforms and good governance;

• creation of policies, legislation and structures to address corruption;

• establishing supportive technologies for management practices and institutional

reforms;

• mainstreaming gender equality in public administration;

• establishing systems to plan and monitor expenditure; and

22

• promotion of broad-based participation in decision-making and monitoring

processes.16

The Role of Partners commission interrogated the roles of various key players in the

post-conflict reconstruction and development arena with a view toward proposing a

framework for coherence and coordination of action between state and non-state actors

and development partners, including donors in the area of reconstructing public

management and administration and its institutions.17 This discussion was predicated

on the concern that the primary focus of any proposed post-conflict reconstruction

strategy is on institutional and multidimensional interventions aimed at consolidating

peace and establishing state capability. A secondary and equally important focus is on

developing a coherent approach to the management of key stakeholders in

implementing and sustaining post-conflict recovery.

From a regional cooperation and integration perspective, it is possible to envision an

institutionalisation of REC post-conflict reconstruction and development capacity and

resource mobilisation as a strategic peace and security dimension of mainstreaming the

African Public Service Charter into REC operations in terms of the African Ministers’

Programme goal of “Building Capable States” within the framework of the NEPAD

Governance Initiative, also a key element in this programme. Within this context, it is

possible to envision a new institutional architecture of REC-based public management

and developmental administration inclusive of REC public service commissions,

consultative forums and post-conflict reconstruction and development commissions in a long-term scenario of transforming RECs into “regional integration communities” in an

evolving continental union governmental system.

THE CAPACITY CHALLENGE Apart from achievements associated with the dialogue that ongoing between the African

Ministers’ Programme, led by the Bureau, and the RECs and development partners in 16 5th Pan African Conference of Ministers for Public/Civil Service Ministerial Workshop on Post-conflict

reconstruction and development. Bujumbura, Club Lac Tanganyika, 8 and 9 April 2008. p. 2. 17 Ibid., p. 2.

23

the development finance institutional community (principally DBSA) followed up by the

SADC Consultation and the Post-Conflict Reconstruction and Development Workshop

in Burundi, there remains a raft of proposed initiatives that remain to be undertaken in

advancing the relationship between the RECs and the African public service and

administration community. A major preoccupation extending across the entire gamut of

these initiatives and challenges pertains to issues of human resource and institutional

capacity building, an area that falls squarely within the domain of the African public

sector in advancing the developmental management agenda of the RECs, member

states and the AU. Here, many of the capacity building issues that have been cited and

recited many times over remain ongoing challenges requiring greater public

management and administrative engagement in the still-evolving institutional

architecture of inter-African governance centring around the RECs and the AU. In this

regard, the embedding of the African Ministers’ Programme within the RECs and the AU

joins the need for new institutional architectural complements addressing the building of

public service and administrative within the AU/REC (and NEPAD) framework with the

challenge of meeting the capacity building challenges.

Defining the capacity building challenge confronting the RECs extends beyond human

resource concerns centring on training, to take in a number of areas addressing the

institution-building and governance needs of the RECs associated with the

implementation of their regional cooperation, developmental and trade agendas. At the

East African Regional Consultation on Enhancing and Aligning Africa’s Human Assets

and Institutional Strengths with Africa’s Capacity Needs in Nairobi, Kenya from 28 to 30

September 2004, it was estimated that African capacity building initiatives amounted to

an annual cost in the neighbourhood of US $4 billion.18 With particular reference to the

high priority afforded to infrastructural development, capacity building is particularly

critical in assisting RECs in developing regional regulatory structures in the transport-

communications sectors, encompassing transport, power, telecommunications and air

18 East African Regional Consultation on Enhancing & Aligning Africa’s Human Assets and Institutional Strengths

with Africa’s Capacity Needs: Nairobi, Kenya, 28-30 September 2004. p. 1 Draft report and planning paper on East African capacity building consultation under Wits University, Centre for Africa’s International Relations capacity building project.

24

transport, as well as in strengthening REC work in facilitating private investment and

public-private partnerships, especially in areas relating to regional power opportunities

and international telecommunications.

In terms of institutional cooperation, building capacity in trade policy at both regional

and national levels is a key REC concern accompanied by enabling RECs to be able to

interface more directly with non-governmental technical specialist and private sector

groupings to facilitate policy harmonisation and regional policy formulation relating to

private sector development. But this latter capacity building dimension also begs an

institutional enabling function addressing the need for RECs to prioritise activating REC

national committees and/or focal points to facilitate capacity development in REC-

private (and NGO) sector linkages. While this survey summary of the capacity building

terrain encompassing the challenges facing the RECs is indicative of the expansive

magnitude of the scope that must be engaged in developing an appropriate public

service and administrative component to drive capacity development, the human

resource dimension of capacity building cannot be underestimated.

In a speech before the African Capacity-Building Foundation (ACBF)-Economic

Commission for Africa (ECA) workshop on “Capacity Needs of the Regional Economic

Communities” in February 2006, UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary

of ECA, Abdoulie Janneh, reiterated what has become common knowledge: “Top of the

list of challenges facing the RECs are the capacity constraints within their individual

secretariats, which are seriously impeding the implementation of their work

programmes.”19 He went on to point out what has become a perennial refrain; the fact

that most if not all RECs are understaffed, suffer from high rates of staff turnover

accompanied by a lack of technical specialist expertise. According to Janneh, at the

time of his remarks, an ECA survey that was cited included a finding that more than

55% of the RECs reported serious gaps in such specialist areas as IT management, law

and accounts as well as in such critically strategic – for Africa – sectoral programme

19 UN Economic Commission for Africa. ACBF-ECA Workshop on the “Capacity Needs of the Regional Economic

Communities: Speech by Abdoulie Janneh, UN Undersecretary-General and Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Africa, 25 February 2006, UNCC, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. p.2.

25

areas as agriculture, economics and political science. And, of course, these staffing

capacity constraints are linked to resource constraints wherein budgets are insufficient

to deal with their technical skills shortages reflecting the fact that member states are

more often than not delinquent in meeting their financial obligation; that were these

obligations met, staffing constraints might be better addressed. However, to appreciate

the holistic inter-connectivity of the staffing-resource constraint conundrum with other

seemingly intractable REC challenges associated with their proliferation accompanied

by overlapping memberships, Janneh points out the logical: “given the multiple

memberships of many countries in overlapping RECs, the ability of these States to meet

their contribution obligations is also limited” while “the effectiveness and efficiency of the

secretariats of the regional economic communities is hampered by the duplication of

programmes at the REC level.”20

Janneh’s comments were made in 2006. Two years prior, with specific regard to SADC,

former Botswana President Festus Mogae alluded to some of the same challenges in

pointing out the discrepancy between what he wryly termed “the progress that has been

achieved in adopting principles and making decisions” which “must be reflected on the

ground” but for the fact that SADC’s problems might lie “at the bureaucratic level, where

most of the key positions remain unfilled despite having been advertised in 2001.”21 He

added that, at the time, most SADC secretariat staff “had become ‘permanently

temporary’, a demoralising situation.”22 It would appear that, in developing a public

service and administrative architecture for the RECs that could bring to bear capacity on

recruitment, appointments, establishing terms and conditions of service and enforcing

standards of discipline and conduct, that an updated survey of REC staffing

complements might be undertaken as part of a process of putting such administrative

services into place at the regional governance level.

20 Ibid., p. 2 21 S’Thembiso Msomi, “Not the neighbourhood bully: South Africa should quit treading so carefully and give the

Southern African region the leadership it needs”, Sunday Times, 22 August 2004. 22 Ibid.

26

With particular regard to post-conflict recovery considerations, it has been recognised

that there is a need for a flexible adaptation of administrative capacity in post-conflict

countries to the requirements of rebuilding infrastructure and effecting governance

reforms on the one hand, and preserving existing assets on the other.23 This

adaptability needs to focus on as speedy as possible a transition from planning to

implementation involving the range of external partners among donors and NGOs.

THE GOVERNANCE CHALLENGE: PEER REVIEW QUO VADIS

One area of that, thus far, has fallen outside the AU/NEPAD/REC nexus has been the

governance dimension introduced into the equation by the African Peer Review

Mechanism (APRM). Although it is not articulated as a key element in the African

Ministers’ Programme, the evolution of peer review, as a participatory accountability

process emerging out the NEPAD initiative, could become increasingly germane to the

African integration dynamics, especially one envisioning an eventual transformation of

RECs into regional integration communities (or RICs) within an emerging African union

governmental context. Moreover, the public service and administration sector is central

to the concept of good governance in terms of responsive, participatory, transparent

and efficient government and service delivery. The APRM is widely considered the most

innovative aspect of NEPAD for its functioning as an instrument voluntarily acceded to

by AU member states as a self-monitoring and evaluative initiative of good governance.

Yet, ultimately, there is a problem of leverage emerging out of a process that may be

voluntarily acceded to but yet is separated from any accession process of wider and

deeper integration; one based on the incentivising of good governance as a

harmonising badge of admission into a more advanced stage of integrated pan-African

governance. Again, such a notion introduces the variable speed concept operative in

the European Union context whereby states can join the EU at their own pace and

23 Division State and Democracy, Project on Democracy and the Rule of Law. Discussion Paper: Promoting Good

Governance in Post-Conflict Societies. Eschborn, 2005. p. 22. “Summary and conclusion,” section on “needs vs. capacities.” Collaboration between GTZ and the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development.

27

where they, indeed, aspire to accede to it and are assisted by the EU in a compliance

programme leading to their eventual accession.

Thus, accession operates as a leveraging tool driving the integration process, instead

of, as in the African case, relying on an inclusive consensus approach wherein all

member states are expected to meet a set deadline which, in reality, can be pushed

back indefinitely as stages of compliance or buy-in fail to be met (though this has

undergone some modification whereby certain organs of the AU have become operative

after a certain numerical threshold has been met by member states deciding to buy into

this or that mechanism as in the case of the Pan-African Parliament, the Peace and

Security Council, etc.). To be sure, there is an element of accession involved in some

states joining RECs, as in the case of Rwanda and Burundi being accepted into the

EAC and Madagascar into SADC. But accession has not become an institutionalised

part of the African integration repertoire as in the case of the EU. However, the APRM,

as an embedded process, could potentially institutionalise accession by serving as a

good governance tool in a regionalised peer review process linked, perhaps, to applying

a variable speed approach to transforming RECs into RICs based on countries

acceding to a RIC (conceivably a politically as well as economically integrated

federation).

Indeed, it could be argued that regionalising the APRM process in such a manner could

accelerate the African union government timetable as opposed to the current

establishing of deadlines which may or may not be met. As things stand now, the

mandate of the APRM is to ensure that the policies and practices of participating

countries conform to the “values, principles, codes and standards enshrined in the

Declaration on Democracy, Political, Economic and Corporate Governance” as a

generator of best practices. A positive good in its own right, it nevertheless, is devoid of

any geopolitical leverage that might otherwise be derived from its being empowered as

an incentivising tool that attracts countries into a wider and more deeply integrated

Africa. At the very least, this is a process that should be a priority subject of comparative

study in looking at both the European and the African contexts from which lessons

28

learned can be drawn for the benefit of advancing the African governance agenda in

which the public service and administration could play a centrally strategic role.

RECs AND THE PUBLIC SERVICE REVISITED: AN UPDATE24

Since the 5th Pan-African Ministers’ Conference, different RECs have been pursuing

different strategies aimed at mainstreaming the African Charter within their respective

regional cooperation frameworks in a manner that can filter down to the national level of

member states. Perhaps the most encompassing of the REC initiatives in this regard

has been within ECOWAS. Here, the African Charter has been regionalised into a

Conference of ECOWAS Ministers of Public Service accompanied by efforts to establish

national coordinating committees. These are intended to serve as mechanisms for the

monitoring and evaluation of monitoring of implementation of the Charter. There have

been four such ECOWAS Conference of Ministers meetings up to 2008. At the second

ECOWAS Conference, it was recommended that member states appoint and

communicate the designation of National Focal Points (which, it was suggested, could

be the chairperson of a national coordinating committee).25

At the fourth Conference of ECOWAS Ministers of Public Service on 9 May 2008, the

focus of deliberations were on a “Decent Work Programme and Sustainable

Employment” covering fundamental principles and rights at work and international

labour standards, employment and income opportunities, social protection and social

security, and social dialogue and tripartism.26 Apart from several recommendations

tabled addressing initiatives that should be undertaken by member states at the regional

level, guidelines were adopted for a regional innovation awards programme on public

service delivery and reforms.27 What is notable about ECOWAS – as with how it has

related to NEPAD – is the extent to which it has taken to heart the African Charter to the 24 This section is partially based on proceedings of the preparatory “RECs Consultation Meeting: 9 July 2008,

Johannesburg, South Africa.” 25 Executive Secretariat. Final Report: Second Conference of ECOWAS Ministers of Public Service. Abuja, 30 April

2004, p. 5. 26 Executive Secretariat, Final Report: Fourth Conference of ECOWAS Ministers of Public Service. Free Town, 9

May 2008, p. 7. 27 Ibid., p. 9.

29

degree of replicating at regional level what is intended at the continental level when and

if the AU adopts the African Charter. At the ECOWAS level, this includes the election of

its own Bureau in counterpart to the continental Bureau currently chaired by South

Africa. ECOWAS has, therefore, been implementing decisions and resolutions at a

regional level of what is envisioned at continental level.

Other REC efforts, apart from ECOWAS, reflect different levels of regional cooperation

and/or integration efforts more generally. Thus, the EAC – comprising five member

states now that Rwanda and Burundi have joined Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania – is

contemplating establishing an inter-parliamentary union to facilitate passing of

legislation within the framework of the East African Legislative Assembly (EALA) given

the EAC’s prospective goal of moving toward a federation; a federated regional

integration community within what is envisioned by the AU in terms of a future

continental union government. Thus, addressing the African Charter within the EAC

context would put greater pressure on national parliaments in harmonising public

service delivery and governance reforms. At present, there is a Public Service

Coordination Committee that operates in conjunction with the EALA at the regional level

with the aim of feeding into the Ministers’ Programme at continental level. What will be

of interest here is how or whether or not this fledgling EAC framework, which points in

the direction of ECOWAS, will influence how the regional trajectory of the African

Ministers’ Programme will evolve within a tripartite SADC-COMESA-EAC framework.

As far as the other eastern African REC, the Inter-Governmental Authority for

Development (IGAD), is concerned, preoccupation is current at the level of moving

IGAD further along toward focusing on economic cooperation as opposed to its

dominant preoccupation with regional conflict resolution. Yet, in terms of a

preoccupation with REC rationalisation, the issue emerges as to whether or not IGAD

should not specialise in a security community function viz-à-viz COMESA and EAC,

thereby, from the standpoint of the Ministers’ Programme, being able to focus on the

post-conflict good governance dimension of rebuilding public service capacity and

regenerating delivery alongside post-conflict governance reform. This would reflect

30

IGAD’s comparative advantage, so to speak, in terms of experience in regional conflict

resolution and the challenges of post-conflict recovery which would enable it to make a

contribution within an expanded cooperation context with COMESA and the EAC.

One of the issues that has emerged during consultations and that, to some extent, is

mirrored in the AU Audit Report in terms of how to advance sectoral mandates such as

public service and administration and adoption of the African Charter, is the dominance

of foreign ministries and departments of foreign affairs. This relates to an observation

that in relating to other ministries among AU/REC member states, foreign affairs are

reluctant to share power with other ministries/departments. This looms as an

increasingly fundamental issue in inter-African affairs. Because of the increasingly

governance-focused nature of inter-African relations between different member states

within a continental and regional multilateral context, the so-called “Africa policies” of

AU/REC member states goes well beyond the purely foreign affairs domain of foreign

policy and diplomacy. Indeed, the very contemplation of AU/REC/NEPAD as proto-

governmental within a pan-African governance context underlines this point. In short, an

African state relating to another African state constitutes more than simply a foreign

policy-diplomatic engagement. Therefore, the concentration of AU/REC relations with

departments of foreign affairs may not be adequate to advancing continental and

regional good governance protocols and mandates related to advancing the goals and

objectives of the AU Constitutive Act and Charters such as that pertaining to the Pan-

African Conference of Ministers of Public Service and Administration.

Thus, the Pan-African ministers of public service may want to consider tabling a

recommendation that member states consider establishing ministries and departments

of inter-African cooperation and integration. These could be tasked with dealing

specifically with governance relations between member states, while addressing issues

of coordination at the national level with other member states, the RECs and with the

AU, perhaps in conjunction with recommended national AU affairs commissions – along

with departments of foreign affairs. Within ECOWAS, some member states already

have such dedicated regional cooperation and/or NEPAD ministries. However, while

31

departments of foreign affairs would concentrate specifically on the diplomatic

dimensions of inter-African relations falling in the domain of foreign policy,

cooperation/integration/partnership ministries/departments would provide the missing

connectivity between national, regional and continental levels in implementing AU/REC

mandates and protocols. This would provide a governing point of reference for national

focal points and coordinating committees such as exist in ECOWAS and called for

within SADC (re SNCs). In turn, this should facilitate the institutional mainstreaming of

the African Charter at national level and regionally such as in the case of ECOWAS.

ADVANCING THE MINISTERS’ PROGRAMME: SCENARIOS IN SEARCH OF THE WAY FORWARD A further elaboration of the peer review dimension in a developing relationship between

the RECs and the African public service sector is suggestive of the potential of this

sector to emerge at the cutting edge of governance reform and institutional restructuring

in the inter-African system. The African Ministers’ Programme, in its quest to fulfil the

African Public Service Charter is concerned not only with public service delivery in the

narrowest sense, but more broadly in regard to good governance. Furthermore, given

the cross-cutting nature of this sector in its concern with building effective and efficient

institutional delivery systems both in terms of human and technical resource capacities,

there is the potential for the African public service sector to function as the centrepiece

in driving an African renaissance. This would obtain, both in making the current AU

system more institutionally effective and, in the process, furthering its longer-term

transformation into an African union government. Because, in a very real sense, making

the current AU/REC system function more effectively amounts to the actual constructing

of the envisioned African union government, or at least to laying the foundations for

continental government based on the RECs as the pillars in such a system.

Recognising these possibilities entails the realisation that, before the continent’s leaders

embark in earnest on the continental union government quest, there still remains a lot of

fleshing out to be done in the fledgling AU governing framework as it already exists.

Here, however, it can be argued that within this current political context, the relevance

32

of the African Ministers’ Programme may reside more in the domain of how it can

contribute to elaborating what is still a very incomplete and embryonic AU/REC

institutional architecture than in the various technical specificities of public management

and administration as a discipline relating to capacity building. In short, to make

advances in this domain, inclusive of the key elements of the 2005–2008 programme,

will require African public service leadership initiative, both at the continental, regional

and national levels, in devising sustainable strategies for carrying forward another level

of institutional capacity building within the AU/REC framework interacting with the

NEPAD political, economic and corporate governance agenda. In essence, this is the

task that defines the way forward.

In contemplating illustrative scenarios that might describe how this process can unfold,

there is a need to envision a maximalist option of elaborating new institutional structures

which may, for the time being, be out of the reach of the AU/REC system in terms of

that system’s financial capacities and a more conservatively modest option based on

knitting together new relationships of interaction between already existing structures at

national level that can be mandated to implement a regional public service and

administration programme within the REC context. From an illustrative scenario

standpoint what will be attempted in this section of the paper is to sketch out two

possibilities with attendant options that are implicit in some the findings that have

already emerged from consultations that have taken place in the African Ministers’

Programme and that build on already existing institutional models operating within the

REC context. Scenario One will be billed as an institution-building path to

regionalising public service and administration which can emanate either from the AU in

Addis Ababa or from REC initiative in the regions. Scenario Two is billed as an

institutional networking coordination model for regionalising public service and

administration with the AU/REC system both in terms of accommodating inter-sectoral

coordination among REC member states and in terms of regionalising the African

Charter as in the case of ECOWAS.

33

Scenario One: Institution-Building

Option One: This scenario would contemplate the establishing of new structures

devoted to institutionalising public service and administration within the AU/REC

system. This could happen in one of two ways: one AU-centric, the other REC-centric.

For the sake of identifying possible African Ministers’ Programme options for RECs

under the AU-centric option, the operative assumption is the establishment of an African

Union Service Commission (AUSC). While, as envisioned, the AUSC would, among

other things, “be responsible for recruitment, making appointments and promotions and

enforcing discipline” as well as “be in charge of setting service conditions and grading of

posts under the Staff Rules and Regulations of the AU”, it would also assume

continental leadership in implementing the African Public Service Charter in cooperation

with the RECs within the framework of an invigorated AU/REC Coordination Committee.

This would include the joint policy formulation and programme design of an agenda for

REC-based service commissions. They would replicate the responsibilities of the AUSC

at the REC level as well as undertake implementation of a good governance

programme, taking as the point of departure the key elements of the African Ministers’

Programme of 2005–2008. Within this AU-centred framework two types of regional

commissions are envisioned addressing: REC-based public service commissions linked

to the AUSC, and regional commissions on post-conflict reconstruction and

development.

With regard to the first category, three regional and two regional joint service

independent commissions would be established:

• a Southern African Joint Service Commission building on cooperative interaction

between SADC and COMESA (within the tripartite framework that also includes

the EAC);

• an Eastern African Joint Service Commission building on cooperative interaction

between COMESA and the EAC (within the same tripartite arrangement that also

includes SADC) plus the Intergovernmental Development Authority (IGAD);

• an ECOWAS Regional Service Commission for West Africa;

34

• an ECCAS Regional Service Commission for Central Africa with provision for

inter-REC coordination with SADC and COMESA; and

• a UMA Regional Service Commission for Northern Africa (including the Sudano-

Sahelian transcontinental sub-region) with provision for inter-REC coordination

with CEN-SAD.

While such regionally based REC public service commissions could conceivably take on

PCRD terms of reference in addition to their broader public service and governance

mandates, the demands of PCRD could also justify specialist regional commissions

established to develop and implement a long-term stabilising PCRD agenda and,

indeed, interact with the REC-based public service commissions in exercising an

Africanised trusteeship-type state-rebuilding role targeting countries and surrounding

regions coping with conflict as well as those emerging out of conflict. Hence:

• Southern African Joint Post-Conflict Reconstruction and Development

Commission;

• Eastern African Joint Post-Conflict Reconstruction and Development

Commission;

• West African Commission on Post-Conflict Reconstruction and Development;

• Central African Commission on Post-Conflict Reconstruction and Development;

and

• Northern African Commission on Post-Conflict Reconstruction and Development.

At the national level, this institutional edifice would be augmented by establishment of

what has been proposed as National African Union Affairs Commissions (NAUACs)

accompanied by national REC/NEPAD committees within each REC member state as

in the case of NEPAD Focal Points in ECOWAS in West Africa and prospective SADC

National Committees (SNCs) in Southern Africa. These national REC/NEPAD

committees or focal points would be represented on a country’s NAUAC. The major

question that remains to be addressed here is the seeming inability and/or political will,

at least in the case of SADC, to activate the SNCs which, within the mandate of the

Regional Indicative Strategic Development Plan (RISDP) is intended to perform a

35

participatory monitoring and evaluation function in regard to a range of cross-cutting and

targeted sectoral issues.

Option Two: The REC-centric option would envision the impetus of institution-building

emanating from the RECs. With the initiative shifting to the regions, the unifying

framework could become the African Ministers’ Programme itself under the impetus of

the Bureau. Indeed, the ECOWAS Conference of Ministers of Public Service might

serve as a suitable model in this regard. Depending on how active a leadership role

would be undertaken by the Bureau, regional public service and administration

constituencies would have to play a particularly active role in driving the mainstreaming

of the African Ministers’ Programme within their respective RECs as in the case of

ECOWAS. In essence, the extent of reform and innovation in public service delivery,

management and governance would hinge on regional leadership in this sector.

Initiatives would become regionalised either within the networking framework of the

Bureau or as a reflection of the dynamics of the region itself and its attendant RECs.

While the commission architecture envisioned in Scenario One could well emerge in this

scenario as well, there is an alternative path that could be pursued based on the SADC

Organ on Politics, Defence and Security Cooperation (OPDSC) model. The OPDSC

includes two inter-state committee structures: the Inter-State Defence and Security

Committee (ISDSC) and the Inter-State Politics and Diplomacy Committee (ISPDC).

Under this model, the commission architecture in Scenario One could be consolidated

by SADC and other RECs in the form of an Organ on Governance, Planning and

Development Cooperation (or OGPDC) empowering one inter-state commission and

three inter-state committees, namely:

• Inter-State Cross-Border Migration Committee (ISCDMC); • Inter-State Post-Conflict Reconstruction and Development Committee

(ISPCRD); and • Inter-State Coordinated Strategic Planning Committee (ISCSPC).

This illustrative organ model would reflect the broad scope of governance reform

inclusive of the kinds of functions envisioned under a regionalised AUSC. Further, in the

case of SADC specifically, it could interact with the more political and security structured

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OPDSC and its ISDSC and ISPDC structures or whatever comparable structures that

exist within other RECs. The critical dimension in both scenarios is that the kinds of

illustrative structures envisioned should incorporate a long-term strategic scenario

planning capacity for overall REC development and interaction with other RECs and the

AU. Additionally, whether either scenario involves the regional commission option or the

organ model, the institutionalisation of a public service and administration complement

within the RECs should aim to bring a greater degree of order and coherence to the

inter-African governing system under the AU while preparing the RECs for further

evolution in a changing AU system contemplating an eventual African union government

presiding over an African Economic Community. Both options and scenarios could

further accommodate regionalised peer review functions though this might require an

additional Regional Peer Review Commissions and/or, in the case of the organ model,

incorporate peer review as a function of an inter-state coordinated strategic planning

committee. However, such regionalised peer review structures would be relevant only

insofar as the AU moves toward a clearer consensus and commitment on the eventual

transformation of RECs into RICs wherein accession would become an incentive for

harmonisation within a variable speed integration agenda.

Scenario Two A: Institutional Networking Coordination

This scenario has two variants that would not be mutually exclusive. The first varient

would involve the nationalising of the REC agenda in the African Ministers’ Programme

in a manner that provides for greater networking connectivity between member states

and the RECs without setting up new structures. It would activate, or might necessitate

activating, REC/NEPAD structures that in some instances exist on paper but have yet,

for various reasons, to be made operational. The first scenario, as well as this one,

should, first of all, be able to accommodate proposed National AU Affairs Commissions

(or NAUACs). The real concern here is the implementation of REC/NEPAD national committee and/or focal points. One option for activating such committees and focal

points would be through the parliamentary oversight function. Yet African parliaments of

variable influence have been notably absent in exercising an oversight role in

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monitoring the implementation of regional cooperation and integration commitments at

the national level.

An alternative route to activating such committees and focal points might be to pursue

consideration of the sectoral working group model that drives cooperation within the

India-Brazil-South Africa Trilateral Dialogue Forum (IBSA). Here, the designated IBSA

focal points within the foreign ministries of the three countries have actively worked to

mobilise the involvement of other governmental departments, civil society and the

private sector in the implementation of a growing range of trilateral project initiatives

emerging from the working groups. There are more than 16 working groups, including a

sectoral working group on public service and administration. The IBSA working group

system (which, in fact, is under consideration for streamlining given its proliferation)

operates according to the rotational leadership of IBSA by one of the three countries

which presides implementing the IBSA agenda over a two-year period.

In this manner, in conjunction with their foreign affairs IBSA focal points, other

governmental departments that are aligned with a working group are involved in the

coordination, at national level, of IBSA commitments including outreach to civil society

and the private sector in undertaking individual sectoral working group commitments.

Meanwhile, the counterpart foreign affairs focal points in the other two partnering

countries are similarly in contact with other ministries and departments and their

respective IBSA national sectoral working group constituencies in carrying out their

responsibilities in conjunction with the lead country and its counterpart IBSA structures

during the rotational leadership period.

There is a recommendation on the table that the AU Executive Council comprising

ministers of foreign affairs transform into a much broader Council of Ministers that would

allow greater scope for sectoral ministerial/departmental participation in deliberation on

specialist issues that may not receive the attention they require from the foreign affairs

sector given the more politico-diplomatic focus of foreign affairs on the one hand and

the technical specialist nature of more sectorally focused ministries and departments

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(which could also reflect ministries of inter-African cooperation/integration). Presumably,

were such a transformation to take place, a council of ministers format at continental AU

level could be smoothly replicated within the RECs. In the event the that this does not

occur, it will be up to African ministers of public service and administration to engage

foreign affairs ministries (and/or economic ministries where they are the focal points,

especially at REC level) to cooperatively structure a sectoral working group format into

the foreign affairs agenda at REC level so as to activate technical committees, including

the public service and administration sector as a regional cooperation priority within the

RECs.

This is also where the activation of REC/NEPAD national committees and focal points

might serve a sectoral working group purpose. Here, the SADC National Committees

are a case in point. As envisioned, the SNCs for each SADC member state are

formatted into technical specialist committees for government-civil society-private sector

deliberation. The sectoral subcommittee format of these proposed SNCs is as follows:

• politics and security; • trade and investment; • food, agriculture and natural resources; • infrastructure and services; and • social and human development.

This format would have to be expanded to include public sector and governance to

accommodate the African Ministers’ Programme at the REC level within an SNC

technical or sectoral working committee format. Assuming that the SNCs within SADC

can and will be activated (as they should be within the overall SADC treaty and RISDP

mandate), which in any case is likely to occur at variable speed, the development of a

dialogue and working relationship between SADC foreign ministers and their public

service and administration counterparts would be in order to carry forward

implementation. Indeed, such a dialogue may be urgently in order as a means of

activating the SNCs in conjunction with the establishing of an IBSA-like sectoral working

group coordinating framework. In terms of adopting a regional cooperation agenda that

implements the African Ministers’ Programme, this could be a critically strategic area of

intervention that departments of public service and administration could undertake to

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implement the long-overdue implementation of REC/NEPAD national committees, such

as the SNCs, and focal points that are yet to be activated in SADC member states and

that, indeed, would add another nationally based regional dimension to the APRM.

Scenario Two B: Institutional Networking Coordination – ECOWAS In what amounts to a second variant of this scenario, either of the above scenarios [one

and two (a)] could accommodate the initiative that ECOWAS has already undertaken

irrespective of the adoption of the African Charter on Public Service and Administration

by the AU. Here RECs could follow suit in establishing SADC, COMESA and EAC

conferences of ministers of public service or, given their budding tripartite relationship, a

SADC-COMESA-EAC conference of ministers of public service. Such a framework

could promote IBSA-like inter-sectoral coordination in working groups, including those

that might be devoted to public service delivery and governance reform. Such a

scenario would require greater study by other RECs of how the ECOWAS approach

works and how it might be adapted to their regional circumstances accompanied by

exchanges missions between ECOWAS and other RECs.

Scenario Strengths and Weaknesses

Scenario One: The problem with the first institution-building scenario is cost

effectiveness and sustainability within the current severe resource constraints of the

AU/REC system; one in which there is an understandable aversion to elaborating new

institutional complements to the current AU/REC architecture. This scenario may have

more relevance in envisioning how an institution-building approach to embedding the

African Ministers’ Programme might contribute, over time, to the evolution of the

AU/REC framework into a continental union governmental system. Given current

realities, such an evolution is likely to occur in piecemeal fashion at variable speed

wherein certain RECs may achieve a level of sustainability before others in being able

to underwrite the illustrative structures suggested here. The likelihood of RECs adopting

such structures may also reflect how far along they are in transforming themselves into

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RICs as might be the case of the EAC where the leaders of its member states have

placed it on a path toward federation, in which case the consolidating of a federal public

service bureaucracy would seem inevitable.

Certainly, the rationalisation of the RECs which would make country memberships more

cost effective and thereby free up more resources for institutional development, might

increasingly make this scenario more compelling in building public management and

administration into the REC/RIC system. In the final analysis however, the important

thing is that for the African Ministers’ Programme to remain relevant, it will have to keep

abreast of the dynamics and trends in the evolution of the current AU system in terms of

the ongoing Grand Debate about African union government so as to be able to adapt its

agenda to where this discourse is leading given its implications for making the inter-

African governing system more efficient and effective at continental, regional and

national level. The African public service and administration sector has a stake in this

unfolding scenario as it will be called upon to shape up the governing systems that a

transforming inter-African governmental system will require. Indeed, it should be in a

position to actively engage in and affect this discourse.

Scenario Two: The strength of this scenario, including its ECOWAS version, is that it

should not require establishing new structures with all the cost implications that this

would entail. What it does entail is a more concerted effort at African public service and

administration networking, first and foremost with focal point ministries – for the most

part, foreign affairs – in devising a technical and/or sectoral working group system,

inclusive of a public administration component, within a rotating country leadership

framework, perhaps in accompaniment with activating existing REC/NEPAD national

committees and focal points where they are not operative. The question that may

emerge and that has to be investigated is how efficiently such a framework can be

managed. Unlike the IBSA sectoral working group format which rotates among only

three countries, an African REC attempt at replicating such a framework would have to

contend with many more countries and variable governing capacities among these

countries as members states of given RECs. There is also the question of which REC

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such a working group format should be attached to where there are overlapping

regional and interregional domains as in Eastern and Southern Africa though the

tripartite cooperation between SADC, COMESA and the EAC could facilitate such a

sorting out of this dilemma. With regard to ECOWAS, ECCAS and UMA, this may be a

simpler process. But how would the multi-country rotational leadership position work in

adapting the three-country IBSA model?

RECOMMENDATIONS

What follows are a few recommendations pertaining to priorities associated with the

forgoing observations and scenarios for effecting a way forward.

• In anticipation of the October tripartite summit between SADC, COMESA and

EAC, the Bureau should consider possibilities of introducing within the summit

agenda the possibility of a tripartite public service and administration coordinating

structure to facilitate establishing a Tripartite Conference of Ministers of Public

Service covering these three RECs. Alternatively, the African Public Service

Charter could be introduced. Either or both would facilitate the harmonisation of

integration programme goals as envisioned by the October tripartite summit.

• In the short-term, the African Ministers’ Programme should seek to build upon the

SADC Consultation of 2007 to establish the Public Service Consultative Forum

envisioned by that exercise accompanied by similar efforts at establishing public

service consultative forums in other regions. The fact that COMESA participated

in the SADC Consultation suggest the possibilities for a SADC/COMESA public

service consultative forum for Southern Africa and an EAC/COMESA public

service consultative forum for East Africa whereas for West, Central and

Northern Africa, the establishment of similar forums may be more

straightforward. Such forums are critical to the need for perpetuating an ongoing

discourse on African public service and governance reform and capacity building

at the regional level of African governance.

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• High-priority agenda items for such consultations should be how to effect a cost-

effective networking framework for advancing public service and administration

concerns within the REC agenda interrelated with how such an agenda can help

the RECs and institutions like the ADB and DBSA address the capacity

development challenges of the RECs.

• The formalisation of such regional consultative forums should also incorporate a

regional PCRD component in an ongoing discourse aimed at addressing the

regional stability challenges posed by given “conflict states” and/or states

undergoing post-conflict stabilisation.

• Because of the cross-cutting nature of ministries and departments of public

service and administration, it is important that there be instituted an ongoing

dialogue and working relationship at national level between such

ministries/departments and ministries/departments of foreign affairs (or economic

ministries in those countries where these form the REC focal points). Such

collaboration will be critical to charting a public service and administration REC

agenda.

• The Bureau should consider undertaking a study of the IBSA sectoral working

group format in terms of how it might become adaptable and be applied to

activating AU/REC/NEPAD technical committees, with a public service

technical/sectoral dimension, either as a mechanism on its own or in conjunction

with activating REC/NEPAD national committees or national NEPAD focal points.

• Of equal priority, the Bureau should encourage other RECs to study the

ECOWAS model of a regional conference of ministers of public service and how

the ECOWAS approach might be adapted and/or replicated to other regional

circumstances. This should include exchanges between ECOWAS and other

RECs in exploring such possibilities.

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• There is a need to consider establishing a networked Centre on African

Governance Reform as a virtual structure (not a new institution) linking already

existing non-governmental regional and continental bodies to formulate and

implement an ongoing research programme; one that would facilitate longer-term

scenario planning on inter-African issues of public service management and

administration import. This would be as a means of ensuring that the African

Ministers’ Programme keeps pace with the fluid process and politics of change in

the AU/REC system and, indeed, becomes a proactive participant in influencing

and shaping the direction of where African integration at the continental and

regional level is headed.

• As a corollary to establishing a African governance reform research network, the

African Ministers’ Programme may also want to consider encouraging the

establishment of an African Integration Forum as a civil society initiative for

promoting non-governmental and private sector dialogue with governments on a

broad range of regional cooperation and integration issues in Africa and

Southern Africa and, also, to participate in monitoring and evaluation activities

pertaining to continental and regional integration initiatives.

• A closely related concern, in follow-up to the above recommendation, is

consideration of how the APRM might be regionalised and adapted as a good

governance accession tool for advancing regional integration in a changing

AU/REC system.

• The Bureau should consider having the 6th Pan-African Conference of Ministers

of Public Service and Administration study and deliberate on the efficacy of

having their respective governments establish ministries (and departments) of

inter-African cooperation and integration pursuant to establishing a council of

ministers that would work with the AU Executive Council in addressing the

governance as opposed to the purely foreign policy-diplomatic agenda with a

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view toward embedding the mainstreaming of the African Charter and the

Ministers’ Programme at national, regional and continental agenda.

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