There is a point at which a governance programme must stop being a conversation about principles and become a conversation about practice, writes Ayanda Buthelezi.
That was perhaps the most important question emerging from a three-day (15-17 September 2026) Managing Change and Public Value Governance Programme, hosted in KwaZulu-Natal and focused on strengthening the institutionalisation of African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) and Open Government Partnership (OGP) principles and values within public administration.
The programme brought together a multidisciplinary cohort from the Department of Public Service and Administration, KZN Office of the Premier, Economic Development, Tourism and Environmental Affairs (EDTEA), Department of Social Development, Department of Sport, Arts and Culture, Mangosuthu University of Technology and Msunduzi Municipality.
It was led by Dr Patrick Sokhela, Acting Deputy Director-General for Government Services Access and Improvement (GSAI) at the Department of Public Service and Administration; supported by Dr Ramona Baijnath from the Gauteng Department of Infrastructure Development; and Dr Mary Mangai, Senior Lecturer at the University of Pretoria.
Together, they combined national policy authority, provincial delivery experience as well as academic rigour.
A message of support from Professor Migai Akech, an inaugurated Professor of Law in Kenya, further placed the discussions within a distinctly African and continental governance context, which also served as a reminder that this was a continental agenda.
But the real value of the programme lied beyond the three days.
Africa’s governance challenge is rarely a shortage of governance frameworks, policies, legislation, strategies and institutional commitments. It is the gap between what policy promises and what citizens expect.
Peer review closes that gap by asking government departments to be measured against shared standards and not only their own standards. The harder question is whether these principles are sufficiently embedded in the everyday behaviour of institutions.
The APRM itself is premised on peer learning, self-assessment, accountability and the improvement of governance through African-owned mechanisms.
Its stated purpose includes encouraging policies, standards and practices that contribute to political stability, sustainable development and stronger governance across the continent.
Similarly, the OGP agenda is concerned with making government more transparent, participatory and accountable, while increasingly emphasizing the institutionalisation of open government so that reform does not depend solely on individual champions or political cycles.
This is where the concept of public value becomes important as this programme’s value lied on three important shifts:
From compliance to value.
One of the persistent risks in public administration is that governance becomes a compliance exercise.
Institutions can become exceptionally good at producing evidence that a process happened without necessarily demonstrating that the process produced meaningful value.
Public value governance therefore asks whether an institution is producing outcomes citizens recognise as meaningful, not just whether it followed procedure.
From principle to practice.
Institutionalising APRM values means embedding them in planning, performance reviews, service delivery standards and leadership conduct.
From silos to shared learning. Putting a provincial office, a social development department, a cultural department, a university and a municipality in one room reflects the reality that public value is co-created across spheres of government and with knowledge institutions.
The benefits for public value creation translate to: Ethical, accountable leadership: Senior managers set the tone. Leaders who internalise these values shape institutional culture.
Better service delivery: Citizen-centred thinking prioritises outcomes, responsiveness and trust over activity reports.
Stronger intergovernmental coordination: Shared language across provincial departments and municipalities reduces duplication and fragmentation.
Evidence-based decisions: The academic input encourages measurement, reflection and learning.
Continental alignment: Local practice is connected to Africa’s shared governance commitments, making the province part of a wider community of practice.
There was particular significance in having a KwaZulu-Natal cohort drawn from different spheres and sectors of public life.
The inclusion of provincial departments, the Office of the Premier, local government and a university created something more valuable than a conventional classroom environment.
It afforded an opportunity to examine governance across institutional boundaries.
Public value is rarely created by one department acting alone and a citizen does not experience government according to organisational charts.
A young person looking for employment, a rural household seeking services, a community demanding infrastructure, a business navigating government processes or a citizen participating in a municipal planning process encounters the state as one system.
The fragmentation of government therefore becomes a public-value problem.
Institutionalising APRM and OGP principles provided an opportunity to ask how these different parts of government can move from operating in parallel to creating shared value around common societal outcomes.
That requires collaboration, data, citizen participation, ethical leadership and a willingness to honestly interrogate institutional performance.
There was also an important continental lesson here. APRM represents one of Africa’s distinctive contributions to the global governance conversation.
It was created as an African mechanism of self-monitoring, peer learning and governance improvement rather than simply importing external governance prescriptions. That matters because public administration does not operate in a vacuum.
African governments are confronting complex and interconnected challenges: inequality, youth unemployment, constrained public resources, rapid technological change, corruption risks, climate pressures, urbanisation and the changing expectations of citizens.
The continent’s governance conversation is increasingly moving towards implementation, institutional capacity, digital transformation, citizen participation and measurable impact.
The APRM’s 2025–2028 Strategic Plan, for example, places emphasis on implementation with impact, institutional strengthening and capacity, partnerships, and stronger communication and outreach.
Dr Sokhela reminded the cohort that the actual real work begins after the programme and warned that the greatest risk after any governance programme is that participants return to their institutions, the certificates are filed, the photographs are posted and the old operating model resumes.
“That would be missing the point. The value of a programme such as this should ultimately be measured by what participants change, influence and institutionalise afterwards,” said Dr Sokhela.
The three-day programme represented more than professional development. It offered a space to reconsider the relationship between governance, institutional culture and the lived experience of citizens.
The broader lesson here was that good governance cannot be sustained by policy documents alone. It requires institutions capable of learning, adapting, listening and being held accountable.
APRM does provides an important African architecture for peer learning and self-assessment. OGP adds a strong emphasis on openness, participation and accountability.
Public value provides a useful management lens through which to ask whether these principles are producing meaningful outcomes. Perhaps that is the most important takeaway from the programme is that, institutionalising good governance is not the end goal. Creating public value is.
