ESARP
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About ESARP

ESARP regional programmes are designed to provide democratic politicians from various African countries an opportunity to learn from each other, share experiences, and help others promote democratic reforms.

The NIMD-ESARP programme brings together the political parties from
the seven countries in the region that have an NIMD programme: Kenya,
Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

The programme objective is to support interparty cooperation and to
strengthen the parties’ institutional development. This is achieved through
thematic regional conferences, inter-country exchange programmes, and
contributions towards knowledge generation and sharing.

Regional conferences

The ESARP regional conferences are an important forum for parties to
share experiences and address common challenges. Conference themes
focus on:

• Understanding the link between democracy and development;
• Improving the quality of democracy;
• Envisioning political parties as the building blocks of democracy;
• Implementing existing international and regional guidelines.

Country exchanges

The inter-country exchange programme is an innovation that took shape
in early 2007. These exchanges are meant to consolidate interparty
dialogue, promote cooperation of political parties across countries and
share best practices. They also act as de facto peer review mechanisms,
in which political parties are able to critically reflect on what is and what is
not working.

Knowledge generation

The regional programme also acts as a regional ‘knowledge centre’ through the offering of comparative information and lessons within the region for both political parties and other interested actors on themes that are of relevance to the institutional strengthening of political parties in particular and democratisation in general.

Activities in 2008

• Facilitating exchange programmes that are feeding into national
reform agendas.
• Further strengthening the linkages between country programmes and
the regional programme by working closely with the CMDs.

Key international partners

• Centres for Multiparty Democracy (CMDs) in ESARP countries
• Centre for Policy Studies (CPS), South Africa
• Electoral Institute for Southern Africa (EISA)
• Institute for Democracy in South Africa (IDASA)
• International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance
(International IDEA)
• Southern Africa Development Community (SADC)
• SADC Parliamentary Forum
• National Democratic Institute (NDI), United States of America