Netherlands Institute for Multiparty Democracy

Mistakes made in one country tend to serve as a clear warning of what should be avoided elsewhere, while best practices provide proof of the fact that no problem is insurmountable. Thus, there is a lot that democracies within Africa can learn from each other. 

What often is lacking is a forum or framework through which this learning and sharing of experiences can take place. ARP provides political parties with a much needed platform for learning by linking them up with fellow politicians and relevant networks in the region, and providing them with research and training material.

ARP brings together governing and opposition political parties from the ten countries in the region which have an NIMD programme, namely: Burundi, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Through the facilitation of peer to peer exchanges, the organisation of regional conferences, the production of research papers, and the development of training material and toolkits on issues of common concern, ARP contributes to the effective implementation of the individual NIMD country programmes.

At the regional conferences, parties come together to interact, share experiences and address common challenges jointly. Through the exchange programmes, ARP facilitates tailor-made and carefully planned country-to-country visits. The regional programme also acts as a ‘knowledge centre’ by offering comparative information, research documents and training materials for political parties and other actors.

In line with its mandate, ARP has for several years organised and undertaken a series of exchange visits between partners and political parties in the African region, in order for participants to share experiences, exchange best practices and learn lessons from peers engaged in processes of constitutional or electoral reform, inter-party dialogue, and dialogue with electoral management bodies and other actors.

With a growing number of visits, and an increasingly complex set of outcomes from each exchange, we would like to highlight some of these exchange programmes and share them not only with our partners but also with other interested stakeholders.

We hope that by reading Peer learning for political parties, our partners will appreciate some of the efforts that NIMD, through ARP, undertakes in the hope of strengthening multiparty democracy in Africa.

More importantly, the results of these peer-to-peer exchanges also demonstrate that whilst international actors like NIMD can support democracy with their European experiences, many of the solutions to the challenges facing Africa’s democratic agenda lie within the region itself.