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Media Release
6 May 2008 Pretoria - How can African governments empower people in developing communities - especially women and children, the most vulnerable in society - to have a more direct say in how public monies are spent to develop their communities? How can citizens in Africa's most needy areas engage with municipal governments to ensure that their needs and rights are met? More than 120 participants representing the public, private and community service sectors in more than 30 African countries will discuss how they have been involved in this process, during a two-day conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on Growing the Social Accountability Network across Africa, hosted by the Affiliated Network for Social Accountability in Africa (ANSA-Africa). "Social accountability promotes civic engagement between municipal government and the citizens who are receiving public services," said Craig Schwabe, a member of the executive committee for ANSA-Africa. "It involves a broad range of actions and activities to build this engagement, such as participatory budgeting, public expenditure tracking, monitoring of public service delivery and citizens' report cards, to name a few. In short, it is a way to give a voice to the poorest and most vulnerable people in any community, especially to women and children. "Without the effective involvement of citizens in government, we won't get effective service delivery where it is needed most: in Africa's poorest communities," said Schwabe. The conference will involve participants and speakers from Africa as well as North America, South America, Europe and Asia Pacific. Representatives from South America and southeast Asia will discuss the budding development of ANSA networks in those parts of the world. Special focus areas of the conference will be: - The status of social accountability in Africa today
- Establishing social accountability in fragile and post-conflict states
- Social accountability in the context of decentralisation and revenue generation
African examples of social accountability in action will focus on extractive industries transparency in Nigeria; checking the state of accountability in the Great Lakes region; and citizens' mechanisms for participative monitoring of public policies in Benin; and gender responsive budgeting in Nigeria. For more information please contact:
Craig Schwabe, South Africa (English and Afrikaans): +27 82 904 0955
Ingrid du Toit, South Africa (English and Afrikaans): +27 82 376 2086 Lourenco Rodriques, (Portuguese speaking): +258 84 313 2650
Claire Quenum, (French speaking): +00228 902 4550; +00228 024 0513; or +00228 222 2977 ANSA-Africa was established in December 2006 as a joint initiative between the World Bank and the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC), with the following goals: - To develop collaboration across Africa on social accountability and demand-side governance initiatives;
- To provide technical assistance to greatly enhance the quality of social accountability initiatives in different countries;
- To deliver training programmes on specific tools and techniques;
- To share country experiences and lessons from social accountability and demand-side governance initiatives, promote and build on Africans' expertise in this area; and
- To establish and strengthen a network of social accountability practitioners and the stakeholders drawn from government, research institutions and civil society.
To promote these objectives, our web portal (www.ansa-africa.net) actively sources and disseminates news, resolutions, insights and techniques on social accountability. It also provides a platform for practitioners to share their views and achievements. A monthly newsletter, Full Circle, announces the latest developments and upcoming events. Our operations are guided by an Executive Committee and Technical Advisory Group, drawing on expertise from different African countries. In its first year of operation, ANSA-Africa has: - Facilitated engagement between social accountability practitioners and stakeholders, the GTZ of Germany and the government of Ethiopia;
- Launched the development of an African Social Accountability Profile (ASAP). The first phase of this scoping study focuses on Egypt, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Senegal, Tanzania and Togo;
- Laid the groundwork for developing a sourcebook on social accountability methods which, along with ASAP, will enable us to develop and implement appropriate capacity and training programmes;
- Allocated the first grant from the initial seed funding provided by the World Bank, to the Municipal Development Program in Zimbabwe, to implement a workshop on participatory expenditure tracking in March 2008 in Durban, South Africa;
- Spoken at social accountability conferences in Madagascar, Lesotho, South Africa and Ethiopia.
- Provided a model for a new social accountability network to be established in the Asia Pacific.
Visit:
www.ansa-africa.net
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