The conference was officially opened by Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyata and had as one of its resource persons the former Prime Minister Raila Odinga. It is attended by a number of MPs who are members of PACs and similar committees.
AFROPAC is a new organisation that seeks to bring together MPs from the continent to share ideas and experiences on the role of Parliaments in financial oversight or ensuring transparency and accountability and other good governance precepts. It should be recalled that at least four regions in Africa, including Southern Africa with its Southern African Organisation of PACs (SADCOPAC) have such bodies at regional levels. Members are still grappling with AFROPAC desirable structure, constitution and functions. The idea of the conference is to in part deal with the aforementioned i.e. adopt the constitution and elect office bearers. The other thing is to make sure that AFROPAC complements regional bodies. The idea of AFROPAC and other regional bodies such as SADCOPAC is greater political regional integration. However, the lack of implementation and enforcement mechanisms, especially that African countries are seldom ready to forfeit a certain degree of their sovereignty for the greater good, has rendered these bodies useless talk shows. There is lack of political will to adopt best standards of transparency and accountability despite please by such bodies. They adopt good standards which a rarely implemented and listened to by African leaders.
