African peer review mechanism as vaccine aganst ICC

His father, Jomo Kenyatta, had changed his name from ‘’Kamau’’ to ‘’Kenyatta’’ – which means ‘’spear’’ in Masai language – to herald the Mau-Mau war against land grabs by Europeans across Kenya’s fertile volcanic soils around Mount Kenya. The international Criminal Court (ICC) had humiliated Uhuru Kenyatta with a racist targeting of African leaders for […]

His father, Jomo Kenyatta, had changed his name from ‘’Kamau’’ to ‘’Kenyatta’’ – which means ‘’spear’’ in Masai language – to herald the Mau-Mau war against land grabs by Europeans across Kenya’s fertile volcanic soils around Mount Kenya.
The international Criminal Court (ICC) had humiliated Uhuru Kenyatta with a racist targeting of African leaders for trial. The African Union rose in his defence:  accusing Euro-American powers financing the ICC of leaving President George Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair untouched despite their responsibility for the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The theme of the 25th AU summit was ‘’Year of Women Empowerment and Development towards Africa’s Agenda 2063’’. With Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma as boss of the African Union Commission- administrative of the AU  Kenyatta found himself caught between her and his own female foreign minister, Amina Mohammed. Dlamini-Zumas combatively told Africa’s leaders that they ‘’must move away from always talking about micro credit and micro enterprises when we talk about women. There is nothing micro about women’’. With the generally low participation of women in executive positions in private corporations and government departments and agencies across Africa, it was a short leap to President Uhuru Kenyatta latching on to a call for the ‘’revitalisation’’ of the APRM, with the promotion of the development of women as one of its priorities.
The APRM, Africa-made, bold and imaginative, promised  Africa a chance to recover leadership in shaping her own affairs through good political and economic management to grow development on graves of colonial impoverishment and kleptocracy by military forces created and trained in colonial cultures of brutalising people. It urged leaders to enhance sovereignty by benefitting from brotherly appraisal of their performances by their peers.
 The reviews are guided by intensive investigations, dialogue and analysis of conditions in the beneficiary country, by highly competent and widely acclaimed African experts. Governors of central banks; past ministers of finance; heads of business enterprises, academics and activists constituted the ‘’Panel of Eminent Persons’’. This ploughing back high quality talents of Africa’s own pool of experts is novel and avoid waste and brain drain.
  Local intellectuals and activists drawn from professional bodies; academia; media; trade unions; religious bodies and NGOs on the basis of gender balance, undertakes intensive research on all sectors of the country and writes a report to be studied by a constituted ‘’Panel of Eminent Persons’’. The South Africa-based APRM secretariat produces background reports to prepare the Panel for reviewing the report of the Country Group; having dialogue with them; conducting interviews with government officials and private sector leaders. The APRM, thereby, gives priority to views of community intellectuals and activists outside of government. The government gets opportunity to comment on the Panel’s draft report before the final version is distributed to Peer Reviewers. This process is more superior in value for good governance in Africa than ICC’s punitive hunt.
Peer Reviewers do commend areas of achievement; rebuke areas of failure, and outline action for deepening areas of success; and mending deficiencies. The Panel of Eminent Persons; the APRM secretariat and local non-governmental ‘Country Group’ are expected to monitor the implementation of recommended measures. The package is a vaccine against ‘Virus ICC’.
APRM is weakened by being voluntary. Corrupt leaders often erect high walls of silence around their failed performances. Timid and poorly educated and under-paid media practitioners do not arouse public demand for Peer Reviews. Civil servants with attitudes of rented labourers or mercenaries cannot engineer required reforms.
 These factors have led to APRM being paralysed by what Kenyatta described as ‘’routine exercises that do not instill the kind of enthusiastic commitment to leadership performance reminiscent of past years’’. Chairpersons of the Panel of Eminent Persons from Senegal and Nigeria have been accused of lack of financial prudence.
African leaders accepted President Kenyatta’s invitation to hold an ‘’extraordinary summit’’, later in 2015, to discuss ‘’strategies for rejuvenating the mechanism’’.  Africa’s leadership soaked in local disdain by millions of angry, poor, illiterate, violent and betrayed youths, must transplant graft-seekers in the civil service into targeted business sectors by loaning them funds that are vigorously monitored by staff of central banks and finance ministries to ensure efficient use in building successful private enterprises. That would wash corruption out of public administration; and create environments free of viruses of cynical greed for staff fired by lofty visions of virtuous transformation of Africa.