2022 Africa and Middle East Regional Meeting

The session seeks to scan participatory budgeting and fiscal transparency approaches across Africa and the Middle East to learn from the efforts of practitioners in pushing fiscal openness and citizens’ participation in budget processes. With practitioners selected to discuss within their contexts, the session will surface insights to sustain existing practices from participatory reform programs in the African/MENA Region and how these practices can be sustained and translated into improved public service delivery.

The session will adopt a Community Dialogue to encourage discussions and knowledge sharing, fostering easy share of ideas in the room. There is a concern about shrinking civic space in democratic countries. With some African countries going into a political transition in 2023, the outputs from the conversations at the session could help participants look at sustainability plans for existing structures and establish dialogue mechanisms that could help withstand any impediment.

The moderator will commence the session by communicating clear objectives and expectations for the session to prepare participants. Participants will have the opportunity to listen to speakers share their experiences working on including community and citizens' needs in their government’s annual plans and how they forged relationships with respective stakeholders.