2022 Africa and Middle East Regional Meeting

Helping citizens engage with their governments has now become part of mainstream development practice. The Open Government Partnership promotes civic participation, with many OGP members making efforts to embed citizen participation through various approaches. Social accountability approaches, such as World Vision’s Citizen Voice and Action (CVA) are designed to empower local communities to hold their governments accountable for services promised. Contextually adapting and facilitating processes to provide information to local communities, facilitate tools to enable voice, spaces for constructive dialogue and agreeing commitments for collective action has delivered impressive results in health care delivery, education, access to clean water, child protection and other services that impact the well-being of children and their families. Further, when facilitated well, social accountability approaches that place people at the heart of public service delivery have been proven to contribute to systems strengthening, facilitate local to national linkages and transforming power relations.

This session will bring together a strong panel of governance champions and social accountability practitioners from Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Liberia and regional bodies to share insights on successes, adaptation, innovation and challenges with civic participation in the governance of public services and accountability processes.

Session participants will have an opportunity to propose or reinforce OGP model commitments that put people at the heart of processes aimed to improve public service provision