The 8th Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the African Parliamentarians’ Network on Development Evaluation (APNODE) was held virtually from 25-27 October 2023, with the theme "Rethinking Integration and Trade in Africa: What Role for National Parliaments?" The AGM provided the platform for the network to reflect on its achievements, challenges, and opportunities for sustainable growth and impact, as well as to nurture a grounded, nuanced and contextualised African perspective on the essence of parliamentary public engagement and better use of evidence for inclusive development.
Karen Rot-Münstermann, Evaluator General of the African Development Bank Group (AfDB), highlighted in her opening remarks that "our gathering at the 8th Annual General Meeting (AGM) of APNODE is testimony to the willingness of African parliamentarians to support the continent's development in a sustainable manner.” Dansa Kourouma, President of the National Transitional Committee of Guinea, furthered this commitment by recalling the role of national parliaments in deliberating and making decisions that shape life in their respective countries and have a considerable impact on the population. "The quality of these decisions depends on the degree of availability of information. We must equip ourselves with the strategies, means, and skills to evaluate national public policies," he said.
Over the past year, the Network has achieved a number of successes, including capacity building through training courses organised for parliamentarians, such as the course "Using Evidence in Policy & Practice: Lessons from Africa", facilitated by CLEAR-Anglophone Africa (CLEAR-AA). “Parliaments using reliable data for decision-making leads to great development, efficiency and inclusive growth”, Dr. Candice Morkel, Director of CLEAR-AA, said. Joining opening session was Hon. Jérémie Adomahou, APNODE Chairperson, and Dr. Edoé Agbodjan, Director of CLEAR Francophone Africa.
The 3-day AGM included plenary and panel sessions. Key agenda items included reviewing and approving the 7th AGM minutes and the 2022 Annual Report. The assembly also elected a new Executive Committee for 2023-2025, considering the organisation's tenth anniversary in 2024. Additionally, two high-level roundtables were conducted, one discussing the role of African Parliaments in rethinking integration and trade, and another focused on Member Parliaments' planning for the unforeseeable with a focus on evidence use. The event had 47 attendees from 11 countries.
The first panel session at the event was moderated by Jayne Musumba, Division Manager with the Independent Development Evaluation at AfDB, featured, Hon. Emeldah Munashabantu, Member of the National Assembly of Zambia, Hon. Abdelilah Hifdi, Quaestor of the House of Councillors of the Kingdom of Morocco, and Hon. Mohammed Adams Sukparu, Member of the Parliament of Ghana. They discussed the challenges of regional integration and trade in Africa, including issues like non-tariff barriers, infrastructure, and the overreliance on raw materials in trade. They emphasized the need for African countries to trade in manufactured products for better intra-African trade. The speakers also highlighted the lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on the importance of innovative measures and local productivity.
The second panel session, moderated by Dr. Candice Morkel, CLEAR-AA, featured, Hon. Gizella Tetteh-Agbotui, Member of the Parliament of Ghana, Hon. Joseph Musanje, Member of the National Assembly of Zambia, and Samuel Kouakou, Member of the APNODE Executive Committee. They discussed the importance of evidence-based policy making, especially in the face of unforeseeable disruptions like the COVID-19 pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine [1], and climate change. The panelists emphasised the challenges in obtaining and validating the right evidence for decision-making and the need for parliamentarians to have the expertise to analyse and use data effectively. They also highlighted the importance of capacity building and training for parliamentarians in understanding and using evidence in policymaking.
APNODE is a network of African parliamentarians and development partners launched in 2014. It promotes the use of evaluation in national decision making to support development effectiveness and inclusive growth, and focuses on the support that evaluation can provide to parliamentarians in their roles of legislation, budgeting and representation. APNODE provides capacity building, networking and a platform to share information, knowledge and experiences on evidence use to foster the positive impact of the policies adopted on the population.
[1] Algeria, China, Egypt, Eswatini, Namibia, Nigeria and South Africa entered a reservation and proposed “Russia-Ukraine Conflict.”