Aidan Eyakuze is the Executive Director of Twaweza East Africa. Twaweza works to enable children to learn, citizens to exercise agency, and governments to be more open and responsive in Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda.In May 2016, Aidan joined the OGP Steering Committee as a civil society... Read More →
Barbara Schreiner is the Executive Director of the Water Integrity Network. She has worked in the public, private and NGOs sectors in water for over two decades, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. She has a particular focus on issues of equity and social justice in water management. She has served on the Boards of IWMI, the GWP, and the Water Research... Read More →
While 13 African governments have committed to open contracting, there are few sustainable approaches that bring together government and civil society in delivering better public services and goods. This exchange is particularly urgent as recent health emergencies and natural disasters have highlighted corruption risks in relation to government benefits and public procurement. This puts the delivery of basic services for citizens across Africa under further stress just when they needed it most. In this session panelists will share experiences focused on the implementation of open contracting and engaging civil society in contract monitoring; demonstrating how that and systematic policy changes can contribute to attainment of value for money in contracting during emergency situations. Our conversation will include academics, media, and civil society organizations that will highlight recent research and case studies on locally-led and effective solutions in regards to public procurement and anticorruption.
Deputy Director, Africa Procurement law Unit, Stellenbosch University
Public procurement law professor, with interest in anti-corruption, sustainable development, international trade and development procurement, with a focus on Africa.
This community session will: 1. Look back on research conducted on feminist open government 2. Share challenges from ongoing GBV initiatives 3. Explore available data and highlight where the gaps are critical 4. Strive to identify who should be doing what to ensure this data is made available 5. Share a few recommendations on how to tackle the lack of data on GBV both offline and online. The format is a town-hall. We will sit in a circle and have relaxed but in-depth conversations. Organisations like Web Foundation, CAFDO, ENABLE and community data initiatives will join as contributors but everyone is welcome to share openly. We hope to share concrete recommendations to OGP member countries and to relevant international policy spaces interested in the conversation.
Digitalization and Innovation Expert, Communauté Afrique Francophone pour les Données Ouvertes (CAFDO)
Malick is an Open Data Specialist. He culminates 7-years of leadership experience at ANPTIC (www.anptic.gov.bf) where He works currently as Manager of the Burkina Open Data Initiative (BODI). He successfully engaged Government’s bodies and Civil Society Organizations in Open Data... Read More →
I'm a Human Ressources Manager and a Social Activist, committed to Communities building, volunteer and humanitarian activities. I'm also a strong advocate of OpenData, OpenStreetMap and OpenSource.I Cofounded a Community of Digital Mapping in Mali which provides GeoOPenData to citizens... Read More →
As champions of Open Government in Africa and the Middle East continue to advocate for greater transparency, accountability, and responsiveness to citizens in the region, it is evident that effective, individual and collective leadership is critical. Effective leadership from government, civil society and other stakeholder groups is needed to scale up transformative reforms and advance the open government movement. With the world's largest population of young people, African governments have the opportunity to engage emerging youth leaders to build the bench of open government innovators and ensure reforms reflect their needs and priorities.
This session seeks to create a space for participants to focus on the leadership challenges and imperatives to advance the open government movement in their country or in the region, with an emphasis on engaging the leaders of tomorrow. The session will feature an excellent moderator facilitating a vibrant and interactive community dialogue on the following key questions:
Young people have an integral role in the African region’s leadership. How should governments harness their energy and innovation? How will you commit to encouraging youth leadership in your mandate? What are some of the key leadership challenges that you are facing as an open government reformer? How did you overcome these leadership challenges? In what ways do you see some of your leadership qualities and characteristics contributing to the priorities and agenda for open government?
Lysa is Secretary-General of CIVICUS and lives in South Africa. She has championed human rights and international mobilisation for two decades. She started her career working for grassroots organisations fighting to end urban poverty in India, and subsequently spearheaded trans-national... Read More →
Governance and accountability are critical in building stable and prosperous societies. Failure to prioritize and invest in governance and accountability erodes the social contract. It leads to corrosion of the government’s ability to grow the economy, deliver basic services and ensure freedoms in a way that benefits all citizens. The challenges facing the region, such as COVID-19, insecurity, coups, undemocratic processes and migration, have hastened the need to reprioritize and refocus efforts toward governance and accountability to improve and deliver better lives for citizens. This was more reflected at the 20th-anniversary celebrations of the African Union during the February 2022 Summit.
This panel dialogue unpacks some critical questions. How do we build high levels of political commitment toward governance and accountability? How do governance and accountability affect power, politics and decision-making? Why do countries continue to struggle with protecting freedoms and civic space?
Aidan Eyakuze is the Executive Director of Twaweza East Africa. Twaweza works to enable children to learn, citizens to exercise agency, and governments to be more open and responsive in Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda.In May 2016, Aidan joined the OGP Steering Committee as a civil society... Read More →
Manager: South Africa Programme, Public Service and Accountability Monitor
Zukiswa Kota is currently a Programme Manager at the Public Service Accountability Monitor (PSAM), a regional civil society organisation based in South Africa. She has extensive experience supporting various social and budget justice interventions including the coordination of a civil... Read More →
Tuesday November 1, 2022 14:30 - 16:00 GMT+01
Palm Plaza Hotel - ChapiteauAv. du 7ème Art, Marrakech 40000, Morocco
The session will involve a discussion between government and civil society representatives from East and West Africa on enhancement of access to justice through alternative justice systems. The comparative lessons will focus on the models on alternative justice systems that have proven successful at people-driven justice. Finally, the panelists will illustrate the manner in which the Open Government Partnership has been an appropriate mechanism to strengthen the access to justice mechanism. Recommendations will be drawn for implementation in respective countries.
This session aims at assessing the potential of beneficial ownership to help ending the use of anonymous companies linked to corruption and mismanagement in infrastructure procurement.
This session will bring together stakeholders from Infrastructure, Extractives and Beneficial Ownership to share ideas and highlighting the value of joint efforts to draft a journey in opening data and shaping reforms and explore the potential to scale efforts beyond procuring public infrastructure into Public Private Partnerships.
EITI is supporting reforms to disclose the ownership of extractive companies and CoST is aiming to implement a similar approach, learning from its sister initiative.
We have also invited the Government of Ghana to share lessons from their application of Beneficial Ownership Disclosure and CoST Malawi on what beneficial ownership means for SMEs.
Presentations will be followed by breakout discussions with participants to brainstorming ways to tackle challenges to unlock benefits of ownership data in the public infrastructure sector and beyond.
The outcome of this session is an inspired group of participants committed to collective action to implement beneficial ownership connected to infrastructure transparency. CoST will work with its partners to turn some of the ideas into guidance on beneficial ownership for infrastructure.
Each speaker will be given 6-7 minutes to share their approach and experience of beneficial ownership and the lesson that may be relevant to infrastructure. Followed by 10 minute Q&A
Small group breakout discussion will then follow for 25 minutes followed by a 15 minute plenary where a rapporteur will briefly share the conclusions of each table. Each rapporteur will be asked to take a brief note of the discussion and share it with the session organisers.
I am the Regional Manager for the African region at Open Ownership. I lead our technical support to national governments in Africa which are committed to Beneficial Ownership Transparency (BOT), helping them implement legal, technical, and other changes required to achieve BOT reforms... Read More →
We see growing momentum within OGP to use co-creation to expand democratic freedoms, with civic space commitments recently adopted in Nigeria, Morocco, and Jordan. At the same time, there are further opportunities in the Africa and MENA regions to use the OGP process to respond to civic space restrictions. This session will bring together civil society and government leaders to share lessons from developing civic space commitments, and to explore how the OGP process can be deployed to protect and support freedom of expression and reduce threats to civil society actors who organise. The format will take the form an interactive/interview styled panel discussion where the hosts/moderators will pose questions to speakers and prompt responses and encourage panelists to pose questions to each other. Civil society and government representatives from Jordan, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria and Jordan will address past successes and future opportunities to engage in co-creation through the OGP process to expand civic space and foster democratic freedoms. The audience will discuss the issues raised and use interactive tools to come up with recommendations for reforms in contexts experiencing civic space restrictions.
From Mexico to Indonesia and Estonia to Kenya, we have seen a range of varieties of collaboration between levels of government within and outside of the OGP process. These conversations seek to highlight and discuss the many ways in which national members have worked together with local jurisdictions to advance open government reforms.
Head of division of statistic, communication and publication under the General Directorate of Territorial Collectivities, Ministry of Interior, Morocco
African and Middle East governments are struggling to pay the debts that they incurred on behalf of their states. In 2020, sub-Saharan Africa had a total external debt stock of USD 702.4 billion, compared to USD 380.9 billion in 2012. Growing debt over the last two decades has left many resource-rich African countries on the verge of debt crises. Since the early 2000s, African and Middle East countries have steadily taken on increased amounts of debt while the quality of public institutions and debt management policies have deteriorated over the same period. As commodity prices dropped unexpectedly during the pandemic; and the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine, African and Middle East countries have been left with even greater challenges for repaying debt. In many countries, public debt payments outweigh government spending on critical social services with many countries now spending more on debt repayment than on education, health and social protection. Opaque debt accounts for a significant portion of this new debt. Lending for big infrastructure projects – much of which is not officially tracked – has contributed significantly to new debts since the mid-2000s. And this lack of transparency complicates efforts to mitigate debt crises as international financial institutions (IFIs) are unable to accurately estimate countries’ debt burdens, provide recommendations to limit debt distress, and determine appropriate debt relief packages. Transparency and accountability of governments involved in the contraction and management of public debt is, therefore, an urgent priority of accountable, sustainable management of debt that can benefit leaders and citizens alike.
This session will highlight concrete open government reforms advanced in the Africa-Mena region by heads of government and civil society organizations. The session will also dive into opportunities to develop a more robust ecosystem of reformers in the region by launching an Africa-Mena Network of Regional and Local Governments and Civil Society organizations.
Wednesday November 2, 2022 11:15 - 13:00 GMT+01
Palm Plaza Hotel - Mimosa 2Av. du 7ème Art, Marrakech 40000, Morocco
During the Africa and Middle East Regional Meeting, the OGP Support Unit will be hosting a meeting of the government Points of Contact (POCs). The aim of this session is for PoCs to get to know each other better and promote an exchange on specific strategic issues pertaining to the OGP co-creation and implementation processes. It will be an opportunity to reflect on different topics, such as the institutionalisation of the OGP process, best practices for an inclusive and successful co-creation, and challenges in implementing commitments and achieving strong results.
Since 2011, seventeen governments in Africa and the Middle East have joined the Open Government Partnership that fosters transparency, accountability, and participation as a transformative tool. Within this perspective and its various accompanying political and social contexts, open government is now viewed as a conduit for change in the quality of life of democratic societies and for the citizenry that inhabits them.
The transformative nature of the partnership is yet to be fully realised in the region. We know that OGP countries in the region implement commitments at lower rates than any other region. On average, African and Middle Eastern countries implement 20% fewer commitments than countries in other regions. Although countries in the region generally make more ambitious commitments, this alone does not explain the implementation gap. Some contributing factors include poor co-creation planning and commitment design, poor civil society consultations, low institutionalisation rates and lack of monitoring processes, capacity and resources.
The POC meeting at the regional meeting will explore how countries can improve their OGP processes based on peer learning.
Wednesday November 2, 2022 11:30 - 13:15 GMT+01
Palm Plaza Hotel - Mimosa 1Av. du 7ème Art, Marrakech 40000, Morocco
This session will simulate a local government council meeting/hearing to make a crucial decision (budget allocation, approve a major capital project, etc). It will involve negotiating. between council (politicians), civil society (citizens), a business interest group, and local gov officials (government/executive). Facilitators will provide the context, the decision that is needed and the time pressure in which it must be made - they will have just 90 minutes from start to finish and a decisive vote must be taken at the end. Participants will be assigned on of four roles: councilors, business, officials, CSO advocates.
Aidan Eyakuze is the Executive Director of Twaweza East Africa. Twaweza works to enable children to learn, citizens to exercise agency, and governments to be more open and responsive in Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda.In May 2016, Aidan joined the OGP Steering Committee as a civil society... Read More →
Wednesday November 2, 2022 14:30 - 16:00 GMT+01
Palm Plaza Hotel - Mimosa 1Av. du 7ème Art, Marrakech 40000, Morocco
Since the start of the pandemic, BudgIT and Connected Development have been highly concerned on the use of funds especially COVID-19 and health sector strengthening resources. With support from Skoll and Hilton Foundation, BudgIT and CODE have been able to track use of public funds and private donations in nine African countries and we are working with multi-stakeholders in creating permanent dialogue mechanisms for health sector accountability.
This session aims to highlight the context around use of funds during emergency procurement and also how the OGP has helped shape vertical health sector accountability in selected countries. We plan to tell stories of four African countries (including gender lens) through a series of lightning talks on current impact and challenges. We would have institutional responses from the key institutional stakeholders as Prince Clem Agba, Minister of State for Budget and Planning in Nigeria.
Our outcome is to build conversations on the importance of mainstreaming social sector accountability and service delivery in the National Action Plans and also entrench permanent dialogue mechanisms. At the end of the session, all participants are expected to support a charter to engage governments, stakeholders and civil society back in individual countries on strengthening health sector systems through accountability with the OGP as a vehicle in achieving such objectives.
Oluseun Onigbinde is the Lead Partner of BudgIT, a civic organization he co-founded in 2011 which works to simplify access to government data and also drives institutional reform. He is a contributor to Data Journalism Handbook and also a member of the OpenSpending Wiki Group, an... Read More →
Jennifer is the Communications manager for BudgIT Ghana, a civic-tech organization that promotes transparency and accountability in public finance. She is passionate about health sector transparency and accountability and policies governing the health sector. She desires to champion... Read More →
In recent times, especially due to the Covid pandemic, the world has realized the tremendous importance and life-changing impact of Open Data and Big Data in bridging the Digital Divide and bringing Digital Inclusion for the Underserved Communities. We will focus through a Lightning talk featuring key actors in the region on different aspect of Digital Inclusion and Access including but not limited to: Education, Public Health, Infrastructure, Online Safety, Affordability, and local and international legal framework of data laws and regulations
Corruption threatens democracy, turning governments into tools of the few and the connected. Transparency — specifically data on what elected officials own and to whom they’re working — is a necessary part of the solution.
The OGP Support Unit partnered with the Global Data Barometer and other organizations to produce one of the first global analyses of the state of political corruption-related data—covering areas such as lobbying, asset disclosure, and contracts. This session will explore the challenges and opportunities in Africa and the Middle East, based on the research findings. A slate of thematic and regional experts will then contextualize the findings in a panel discussion.
Then, we want to hear from you. The session will have small group discussions on how to use OGP’s new flagship report on political corruption to improve action plans and help us move more towards fair and transparent decision-making.
Senior Research Officer, Open Government Partnership Support Unit
Renzo Falla is a Senior Research Officer at the Open Government Partnership (OGP), where he conducts research related to open government and anti-corruption through the use of data analysis, visualization, and automation. He is author or co-author of several reports, including O... Read More →
Chief Research Officer, Open Government Partnership Support Unit
Joseph Foti has over 8 years of experience in assessing good governance. He works at the Open Government Partnership as the Program Director of the Independent Reporting Mechanism. Prior to joining OGP he worked as a Senior Associate for the Access Initiative, a network led by... Read More →
Many OGP national members are committed to access to justice with at least eighteen (18) members currently co-creating or implementing justice commitments. Five (5) of these are in the Africa and Middle East region.
This session is a collaboration between the Pathfinders for Peaceful, Just and Inclusive Societies and the African Centre of Excellence for Access to Justice (ACE-AJ), a continent-wide network of African Civil Society Organizations working on promoting access to justice.
Two countries, Sierra Leone (a member of the Justice Action Coalition) and Senegal, both with commitments to access to justice, will share their experiences in terms of implementing their justice commitments with a particular focus on community-based paralegals. ACE-AJ will share successes and challenges faced by community-based paralegals in countries where it has members including Sierra Leone, South Africa and Malawi. The Legal Empowerment Fund, which will also be represented, will share insights on the opportunities for funding grassroots activists and organizations.
The session will be an interactive (including audience participation) deep dive into the potential benefits of leveraging community-based paralegals in OGP countries that are committed to delivering access to justice while exploring the challenges and proposing solutions, including innovative funding mechanisms.
Eleanor Thompson is a public interest lawyer who works alongside community-based paralegals at Namati to help communities in Sierra Leone protect their land rights and environment. Among other work at Namati, Eleanor provides direct legal assistance to communities during lease negotiations... Read More →
Wednesday November 2, 2022 16:30 - 18:00 GMT+01
Palm Plaza Hotel - Mimosa 2Av. du 7ème Art, Marrakech 40000, Morocco
Anonymously owned companies can be allies of hidden money linked to corruption and other illicit purposes. Their existence and misuse directly prevent the open government community from realising its aspirations. Beneficial ownership transparency is a key tool to address this.
Using a Lightning Talk format, this session will be moderated by a representative from a global organisation and will invite four government and civil society speakers from Liberia, Nigeria, South Africa and Zambia, as well as the audience, into a conversation on successes, challenges, existing tools and progress towards the implementation of beneficial ownership transparency. As many illicit financial flows in Africa still come from extractive industries and other high-risk sectors, the session will include lessons from the Opening Extractives programme delivered jointly by Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) and Open Ownership (OO).
All speakers will be invited to share examples and stories around the following questions: What combination of factors, including the open government process, helped you move from commitment to action ? How has the extractive sector been pioneering BO reforms and what can other sectors and countries who haven’t started such a process learn from it? Why is inter-governmental coordination and multi-stakeholder consultation and cross-country collaboration important in developing stronger BO reforms and maximising chances of data use? Why is it important for reforms to not only focus on data publication but also on quality, accessibility and usability of the BO data disclosed? How is the risk-based approach shaping BO implementation?
Exploring progress and gaps towards effective analysis and use of existing data, the session will foster cross-sectoral and cross-country learning and provide space for networking for future peer exchanges.
Africa is under assault from foreign actors working covertly to influence policy making, elections, and public discourse, through instruments that include information manipulation, opaque lending and corrosive investments, and covert political finance contributions. To date, open government approaches have focused primarily on addressing threats posed by domestic corrupt actors. What adaptations or innovations are needed to defend against foreign-sponsored corruption?
Drawing on three policy briefs developed by OGP and NDI, and in partnership with Transparency International, the three panelists will provide their perspective on the threat of foreign corruptive influences. Following this, participants will break into groups to brainstorm openness and oversight measures that build resilience against foreign interference.
Africa has experienced a gamut of social movements that have been stirred up by the failure of the government to serve its citizens. Citizens’ dissatisfaction with the government has further evolved into social movements. From protests against police brutality in Nigeria (#EndSARS), citizens standing up against the government abusing basic human rights in Zimbabwe (#ZimbabweanLivesMatter), Namibians demanding justice against all forms of Gender Based Violence (#ShutItAllDown) to the Congolese crying out for basic human rights (#CongoIsBleeding), the consensus is that government, as it is currently done, is not serving its purpose and as such citizens are taking to the streets to demand that government actually becomes the government. No doubt, these social movements have gotten the attention of the world, making the rounds in the News but the question remains - Have these social movements led to actionable plans that have brought about improvement in government? As a Community Dialogue, the Moderator will allow time for panelists to discuss topical issues and give the audience the opportunity to make comments and suggestions on: How government can better respond to social movements. How citizens can coordinate social movements to ensure that their demands are met"
Programme Director, Governance and Anticorruption, International Lawyers Project
Steph is a seasoned governance professional currently serving as the Programme Director Governance and Anticorruption for the International Lawyers Project (ILP). ILP supports both public institutions and civic actors to advance economic justice and the rule of law through provision... Read More →
As open government reformers engage in bringing together governments and civil society to jointly strengthen transparency, accountability and participation, they are continuously innovating new approaches to define processes and tools to help achieve real and sustainable impact. From promoting access to information to engaging citizens in monitoring government actions, this session will highlight selected solutions of OpenGov in Africa and the Middle East region. The speakers will tell the stories of the genesis, the methodologies and the impacts of their solutions/processes.
Gender-based violence remains a systemic challenge across OGP members, and can prevent women from participating fully in public leadership. Policy and legal responses to gender-based violence are in need of open government reforms - those that make systems and services more transparent, accessible, and responsive to the needs of those who experience gender-based violence, intimidation, or harassment. These approaches can help better address both offline and online gender-based violence experiences, whether directed at women running for office, leaders in civil society or public administration, or advocates and reformers.
This lightning talk session will bring together a diverse set of experiences to answer questions such as what specific justice concerns do women candidates or public leaders have, and what prevents them from accessing support? How can open government or open justice solutions deliver fairer and more equitable experiences for women leaders?
Questions: What justice issues do women leaders specifically face when running for office or assuming public roles? What do these threats, harassment, intimidation, disinformation attacks look like in practice? What prevents leaders from accessing support or redress mechanisms, whether legal or policy barriers or cultural barriers? What psychological services or support training (if any) is available to leaders experiencing VAW-P? What open government or open justice solutions can we build on to deliver fairer and more equitable experiences for women leaders? How do we connect across other government GBV efforts or action plans? What policy or practice changes are needed? Who should be involved and what is their role - party leaders, police and security sector, justice actors, electoral bodies?
In this session SARW and ONG 3D will lead the key conversation by showcasing the corruption and transparency vulnerabilities within Southern and West African Development countries’ fiscal and decarbonisation policy agenda, which will ultimately impact the region’s just and equitable energy transition ambitions and its ability to deliver current and future public services. The current focus and conversations on decarbonisation and just transition have not been done from the context of securing public service delivery. This session will contribute to the open government community by exchanging ideas and research conducted in Senegal of community and municipality accountability measures of fair share of mining revenues. The session will also create dialogue around the multilateral initiatives which would enable a just and equitable energy transition through enhancement and advocacy of fiscal transparency policy such as beneficial ownership. This will be achieved through a discussion of Zambia, DRC and South Africa energy transition commitments including communities lived experiences of climate change, the political considerations towards just transition within Africa more broadly, the use case of beneficial ownership transparency in the energy transition policies and avenues for the OGP to contribute to sustainable imperatives in climate change and good governance in the extractives sector across the region.
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.
Manager: South Africa Programme, Public Service and Accountability Monitor
Zukiswa Kota is currently a Programme Manager at the Public Service Accountability Monitor (PSAM), a regional civil society organisation based in South Africa. She has extensive experience supporting various social and budget justice interventions including the coordination of a civil... Read More →
This session will explore important strategic questions in phase 2 of the development of OGP’s new 2023 to 2028 strategy. Groups will discuss ideas to build thematic leadership, exploit windows of political opportunity and strengthen public participation.
Every year, governments in Africa spend over 60% of the national budget through public contracting yet less than 1% of the contracts are won by women-owned enterprises, excluding many women and exacerbating inequality. The contribution of lack of women’s participation in public procurement is significant yet not strongly recognized. Based on research by AFIC and partners in Kenya, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Uganda and Tanzania, the session aims to sensitize OGP stakeholders on the barriers and proposed solutions to women’s participation in public contracting in respective national action plans of OGP countries. It will recommend OGP countries to make commitments to promote women’s participation in public contracting in the National Action Plans.
OGP has the potential to mobilize political will and technical solutions to address the problem. The session will start with the moderators asking speakers to highlight the major policy, structural and social cultural barriers, existing good practices and strategies to increase the participation of women owned businesses in public procurement. This will be followed by engagement of the audience through a question-and-answer session to contribute to strategies the OGP community can undertake to increase women’s participation through the OGP platform. Before summing up, the moderator will request representatives of OGP member countries in the room to high one take away from the session.
Deputy Director, Africa Procurement law Unit, Stellenbosch University
Public procurement law professor, with interest in anti-corruption, sustainable development, international trade and development procurement, with a focus on Africa.
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
I look forward to a rich session of learning and sharing on November 3rd, 2022 around the topic " How Civic Participation and Collective Action can Improve public Services across Africa" and to make concrete calls for urgent action by Africa's Decision makers. Do remember to sign... Read More →
The digital revolution is rapidly transforming how we live, communicate, and work as part of an accelerating global societal transformation. The changes are however also amplifying the digital divide, creating new threats to the very fabric of African democracy and sustainable development, with information increasingly weaponised by malign actors to subvert governance. This session will bring together leading African organisations that are pioneering responsible adoption and use of technology, as well as watchdogs who help guard against the digital subversion of democracy. The discussion will explore the current threats to open government and responsible technology, and will examine practical ways to strengthen Africa's governance architecture, based on transnational multi-stakeholder collaboration.
Examples of questions/answers:
What are the issues that require collective efforts to promote and protect the digital space in our region? - (now to bridge the digital divide, now to identify threats to democracy such as coordinated disinformation and weaponised hate speech, now to ensure more equitable access to digital opportunities)
What are some solutions that showed some successes? - (Tech-Ambassadors/TechPlomacy, AU's African Charter on Democracy, Elections & Governance operationalisation of OGP principles, ADDO’s partnership with UNDP/UNESCO to detect/counter disinformation + hate speech that attacks elections and other democratic processes)
How can we work better together to drive the agenda? - (Morocco's digital working group, OGP Kenya's proposed 2023 high level forum, ADDO's pan-African community of practice for OSINT watchdogs, AUDA-NEPAD-ACDEG development of continental govtech platforms, and the opportunity to collaboratively build open source repo of govtech/civictech in the global south)
Founder / CEO, Code for Africa (CfA) // African Digital Democracy Observatory (ADDO)
JUSTIN ARENSTEIN is founder / CEO of Africa's largest federation of civic technology and open data laboratories, Code for Africa (CfA).He is also co-director of the continent's largest forensic technology / digital security lab for investigative watchdogs, at the African Network of... Read More →
