AS per tradition, March saw the convening and conclusion of the Third Session of the 12th National People's Congress (NPC) of China at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. Which issues did Chinese legislators discuss during this year's session? What lessons can be drawn for the benefit of African countries?

An understanding of the NPC starts with the question: What is the NPC? This is important not just because it helps Africans interested in the workings of the world's largest legislative system in terms of number of deputies (or legislators or parliamentarians), but because it could provide pathways for many African countries looking to rework their parliamentary sessions in the face of new socio-economic demands.

A conventional explanation would be that the NPC is China's legislative body with the responsibility of debating and passing laws, providing oversight over governance operations, and setting and reviewing plans across societal sectors. These functions are more or less similar to the work of national legislative bodies globally. This is indeed largely what parliaments in African countries also do.

However, whereas most parliaments in Africa hold many sessions every year, the NPC holds a single session annually over a period of 10 days to two weeks. It is for this reason that the recently concluded session is designated the third session. In other words, the session held in March is the third sitting since the inauguration of the 12th NPC in March 2013 with the then new President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang taking over from their predecessors, Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao.

One appreciates the potential of the NPC's single-session-per-year modus operandi to serve as an exemplar for African countries when you compare the work accomplished by the NPC vis-à-vis the performance of most African parliaments.

During NPC sessions, the Chinese premier makes a key presentation based on a comprehensive document detailing government work across key sectors for debate by the deputies. Because this document covers a whole year's implementation of set goals and plans, an assessment of whether the government is delivering on its promise can be reached even as new goals are set for an annual cycle.

A potentially vexing question for an African would be: so what do the deputies do during the year when the NPC is out of session? Well, deputies in the Chinese system are elected to continuously focus on the day-to-day implementation of agreed goals and plans. Their observations are shared on an equally continuous basis with the executive arms of the government. The deputies can always reserve their more far-reaching proposals for the annual sessions. It is understood that the more substantive issues must be subjected to motions and then make their way into new laws or reforms to existing laws, sometimes even changes to the Chinese Constitution.

It would perhaps be too much to expect African parliaments to reduce the many sittings and sessions to just one, as in the NPC case. Still, room exists for the whittling of the sessions in African parliaments to the essential minimum. If you want to appreciate the "talk shop" nature of most African parliaments, you need only to tune in to a session of parliament in places such as South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria. Half the time, the parliamentarians are far off target with regard to their nation's development agenda. Most parliaments are indeed theaters for trading accusations and counter-accusations.

Borrowing a leaf from the NPC book, African parliamentarians could use the time saved by the reduction of the sittings to undertake research, consultation and serious thinking around the challenges their countries face. As in the case of the NPC, the findings of the parliamentarians could then be shared with the executive arms of the government for implementation. The obvious dilemma with this suggestion is that the multiparty formation in most African countries does not allow for sharing of knowledge and information across party lines. But then again, new legal structures could be evolved to address just such a challenge.

In other words, the NPC model does not have to be emulated word for word. Its key kernels, inter alia, of saving time, having a more elongated period of time and space for implementation of decisions and other rubrics, could be the springboard for tinkering with our legislative structures in line with our own political circumstances.

(The writer is a research associate at the University of the Witwatersrand)