The African Regional Workshop for the Non-Governmental Process for the Community of Democracies was held in Johannesburg, South Africa on November 22nd and 23rd. The workshop was organized by Electoral Institute of Southern Africa, the Executive Secretariat of the Non-Governmental Process, and IDEA International.

At the workshop’s opening plenary, on the 22nd, Denis Kadima (Executive Director, EISA) and Dr Abdalla Hamdok (Regional Director for Africa, IDEA) both gave words of welcome, and Andrea Sanhueza (Executive Secretariat) gave a brief presentation of the Non-Governmental Process as well as the goals of the African Regional workshop.

Around 29 members of NGOs, Universities, political parties, and political foundations of seven countries from the region attended the meeting. The Executive Secretariat was represented by Andrea Sanhueza and Silvana Lauzán.

The objectives of the African workshop were to:

• Evaluate main challenges to democratic governance and development based on the deficits in Africa
• Permit the development of a substantive dialogue among NGOs, political parties, political foundations and think tanks to promote a mutual understanding for collaborative work on democracy building
• Generate proposals related to the strengthening of democracy to be presented to governments of the Community of Democracies at the Santiago Ministerial Meeting
• To plan and coordinate agendas and subsequent strategies

The workshop was divided into sessions with panels on each of the major democratic deficits that had been identified in Lisbon, Portugal, at the first meeting of the Non-Governmental Process for the Community of Democracies. The sessions were titled:

• Political parties and civil society
• Electoral systems and the electoral process;
• Governance
• Security and Democracy

The final document with the proposals will be presented to the Governments at the Ministerial meeting that will take place in May 2005 in Santiago, Chile, and they will also be compiled and published by the Executive Secretariat in 2005.

For more information about the program, the list of participants or the Non-Governmental Process for the Community of Democracies, please contact the Executive Secretariat at: secretariat2005@participa.cl .