Such policies are key parts of the New Partnership for Africa's Development (Nepad), a three-year-old recovery plan drawn up by African leaders to be discussed for two days in the Rwandan capital.
The main focus of the talks will be formal adoption of a Peer Review Mechanism (PRM), whereby each of the 16 participating states will agree to have their achievements and shortcomings with regard to good governance and rights assessed by the others.
Presidents Omar Bongo of Gabon, John Kufuor of Ghana, Joaquim Chissano of Mozambique, Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal, and Thabo Mbeki of South Africa were already in Kigali yesterday, when the summit was due to officially open at 14:00 GMT.
While yesterday's business will centre on deciding the specific mechanisms of peer review and setting up a "panel of the wise", Saturday's meeting will inlcude all Nepad members states and deal with pushing the wider initiative forward.
"It is very important that the heads of state endorse the (PRM) guidelines that have been prepared, to enable the process to start next week," Wiseman Nkuhlu, chairperson of the Nepad pilot committee told journalists in Kigali.
"What the PRM does is that it really promotes transparency in a manner that has not been seen before in Africa," he added.
"The (evaluation) panel is really going to cover all the areas, including corruption, human rights and socio-economic development.
"It is that openness that is going to really empower citizens and make it possible for them to be really informed and be able to hold their leaders accountable," he enthused.
Nkuhlu added that it was not out of the question that countries that disregard PRM criticisms might be locked out of some Nepad initiatives.
The first countries to come under the PRM microscope this year will be Rwanda, Kenya, Ghana and the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius.
Reports into these voluntary assessments will be published after each mission.
Critics of PRM lament the lack of provisions for punitive sanctions for those who fall short of good governance benchmarks or fail to comply with recommendations made by the PRM measures.
What is even more important in attracting foreign capital to Africa, according to one diplomat in Kigali, is that investors "are assured that they won't be arbitrarily expropriated from one day to the next and that customs duties will not be suddenly raised, and so on".
A more optimistic observer noted, "there will still be a strong moral pressure. Everyone will have an interest in submitting to such an evaluation, and not only with regard to donors".
Within 18 months, it is hoped, all the countries that have signed up to the Peer Review Mechanism, thereby committing themselves to a kind of code of conduct, will be evaluated, then once every two to four years afterwards.
This mechanism, as well as other key doctrines of the African Union, the two-year-old pan-African body, which encompasses Nepad, marks a departure from the sancrosanct principal of not interfering in the internal affairs of fellow African states that lay at the heart of the now defunct and unmissed Organisation of African Unity.
Just 16 countries have so far signed on to the PRM: Algeria, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Mali, Mauritius, Mozambique, Nigeria, the Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa and Uganda. – Sapa-AFP.
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