By: Dwight Links
Early this month, local civil society and representatives of the Namibian branch of the Africa Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) in Windhoek met to assess Namibia’s progress in its development journey.
According to the organising entity CIVIC+264, this was also to understand what role civil society played in promoting good governance and implementing the National Programmes of Action (NPoA).
One such session of the gathering was a panel discussion of Graham Hopwood (IPPR), Marius Kudumo from NamNet and Ben Schernick (NamNet).
Responding to the question of success stories of being part of APRM as a country, Hopwood noted that it is a balance between the successes and continuous work.
“When President Mbumba revealed the Namibia Country Review report in 2024, which contains the national programme of action sections – which is a massive section of more than 50 pages alone – there were few good things on there,” Hopwood noted.
He emphasised that there are other areas in which civil society tries to be active, including good governance and socio-economic dimensions.
“I think for civil society, there is not much awareness of this table at the back of the report [2024]. For example, the report says that the Access to Information bill needs to be promulgated; fortunately, when the report came out, the bill was already an act,” he added.
The NPoA contains recommendations emanating from the Country Review Report (CRR) for Namibia as peer reviewed by the African Peer Review Forum of Heads of State and Government in February 2022.
According to the report, the section of the NPoA is meant for the agencies, ministries and offices of the government to follow on the recommendations.
“The NPoA is an integral part of the CRR that not only outlines recommendations contained in the CRR but most importantly guides the process of implementation of the recommendations of the CRR by the Government’s implementing OMAs,” the 2024 report states, where the obligation for implementation lies.
The report says that during the development of the NPoA, stakeholders were clustered into four thematic areas of the APRM.
“These were into a Democracy and Political Governance (DPG) cluster, an Economic Governance and Management (EGM) cluster, a Corporate Governance (CG) cluster, and a Socio-Economic Development (SED) one,” the document reads.
ANY ISSUES?
Two years later, civil society stakeholders cite that implementation is the biggest problem for Namibia.
“We say this time and time again that implementation is the biggest problem for the country,” Hopwood added.
According to him, some wins were noted down for Namibia’s review, such as increased women’s participation in politics. This, he said, has markedly increased since President Nandi-Ndaitwah came into office.
Kudumo noted that the most important aspect of any successes is that there is a structure that has been identified for implementation of recommendations from the report.
“For me, I like it that there is a clear mandate on what [stakeholders] identified in the review report should know what they’re supposed to be doing. And also, the way they are supposed to do their work,” Kudumo added.
Kudumo emphasised that the thematic areas are key for the needed interventions that would help Namibia achieve some its targets in line with the review report and the NPoA contained within.
“We have to understand where the APRM is coming from. It stems from the New Partnership for Africa’s Development. Which means that the way Africa is governed must be different,” he explained.
Kudumo added to his explanation that the new approach places a citizen-led development roadmap in each country on the continent.
“People should then reflect satisfaction in how they are governed. The fact that you have a structure, you have programmes, and you invite people to participate is important for me,” he highlighted.
