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Concept note: Regional Economic Communities and the African Public Service Ministers' Programme
October 2008
Paper prepared for the Conference of Ministers of Public/Civil Service
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.
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 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.
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