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Dr. Salim A. Salim, Secretary-General of the OAU, recalled that the Twenty-Sixth Ordinary Session, the Assembly of Heads of State and Government of the OAU had adopted the African Charter for Popular Participation in Development and Transformation. In so doing, African leaders had recognized the need to situate people at the centre of Africa's development and transformation process as an essential feature of building good governance in Africa. Empowerment of the people to involve themselves effectively in creating the structures, policies and programmes was necessary for enhancing the development process.
Also in 1990, the Assembly of Heads of State and Government adopted the Declaration on the Political and Socio-Economic Situation in Africa and the Fundamental Changes Taking Place in the World, a landmark document on the new vision, role and position of the OAU in the new international context. Indeed, for the first time in the history of the OAU, African leaders had addressed themselves to the issues of democratization and good governance in a candid and profound manner. They critically reviewed the situation on the continent and reached conclusions that had set the new agenda for the future of the organization. The issue of democratization and good governance, he stated, had thus been on the OAU’s agenda for the last seven years. Africans as much as other peoples aspired to liverty, human dignity, equity and socio-economic progress. Governance was the totality of the exercise of authority in the management of a country’s affairs, comprising the complex mechanisms, processes and institutions through which citizens and groups articulated their interests, exercised their legal rights and mediated their differences. The prerequisite for building democracy, Mr. Salim concluded, was the promotion and support of dialogue between and among all groups, whether ethnic, religious, or regional.