Social Change in Ghana, Senegal and Burkina Faso - A Hit? A Miss? Or a Work in Progress?

"How does change happen? What are the triggers? Can we identify the tipping point? Is there a formula that is replicable? These are questions that all human rights advocates and development actors ask. Civil Society and governments in West Africa offer a unique set of valuable experiences, impactful practices, initiatives, tools and persisting gaps in its attempts to ground a good governance agenda.”

This report looks at the efforts that civil society organisations (CSOs) in West Africa and their supporters are making to achieve greater social justice, particularly in relation to transparency, participation and accountability (TPA) in how budgets are allocated, how services are delivered, how citizens and government interact with each other, and how all these dynamics interrelate. The report highlights the existing national and regional mechanisms; successful initiatives by government, CSOs and social movements; as well as the persisting challenges to accountability. It features case studies from the three countries and maps out what their process of change has been and the key elements that contributed to their success. 

Published by Niyel, an advocacy, campaigns and public affairs firm, the report seeks to share the organisation's lessons learned from working with CSOs on a variety of issues ranging from education, health and nutrition, to budget monitoring, extractive industries, and elections in West Africa. The report draws on an extensive literature review and interviews with over 30 leading organisations, as well as government officials and donor agencies from the three countries - Ghana, Senegal and Burkina Faso. The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation commissioned the report to learn what strengthens accountability between citizens and their governments in West Africa which will inform their Global Development and Population Program grant making in the region.

The report first discusses the global context as well as the regional and national mechanisms that are in place for good governance. Regional mechanisms include the African Peer Review Mechanism and the ECOWAS Mining Directive, and national mechanisms for Ghana, for example, include the The Decentralization Act (1988) and the United Nations Convention on the Fight Against Corruption.  It looks at how these mechanisms have been used by CSO’s and what difference they have made.

In reviewing the work that CSO’s have done, the report highlights key actions that West African CSOs use to drive good governance forward. These are:

• Research - CSOs engage in participatory research, whereby citizens’ views on TPA are collected through Community Score Cards, public opinion surveys, like the Afrobarometer or through other monitoring tools used to gather data from the ground.
• Dissemination - CSOs set-up data centres, organise seminars, workshops, policy dialogues, informal meetings with decision makers, community discussions and the media to share findings from research and create a sense of ownership for the findings. TV and community radio broadcasts,  social media (Facebook,  Twitter), and mailings lists of influential  people are also common approaches  to sharing information on TPA. 
• Capacity Building - CSOs strengthen capacity of citizens, the media, and government institutions in communication, networking, collecting evidence, and policy monitoring. They also often build parliamentarians’ capacity to analyse budgets and bills.
• Partnerships and Networks - Most CSOs are part of coalitions and networks when there is a common interest. All bring in different competences but present a united front to give weight to an advocacy issue.

However, despite the many efforts to render governance practices more inclusive, West African countries still face a number of challenges that are slowing down their progress. “These persisting issues crystallize the most pressing weaknesses that ought to be tackled for a substantial shift to be realized in the region’s good governance landscape.”  These challenges are discussed in detail in the report and relate to the following three areas:

• The protracted acceptance of total power - for example, in all three countries implementation of laws and policies around better TPA in social services, extractive industries and national budgeting is still a major challenge that weakens the impact of legal and policy mechanisms. There is also still a lack of information due to a culture of non-disclosure of information and the absence of a Right to Information Law.
• Limited capacity of governments - for example, in all three countries governments have not been able to convert technical information into simple accessible content, written in as many local languages as possible, without external assistance, which means that this process is not institutionalised or sustainable.
• Limited capacity within civil society organisations - as stated in the report, “[A]lthough instrumental, CSOs and the media are not always equipped to participate effectively in decision making processes especially at the national level. Their lack of capacity to make quality contributions is due to low levels of technical expertise in social development subject matters. The media often struggles to generate quality and thought provoking reporting on social development issues in a captivating way and lack the capacity to carry out investigative journalism as frequently as necessary.”

The report ends with suggested short-term and long-term recommendations for donor agencies and intergovernmental regional institutions, West African governments, and CSOs. As stated in the report, ”CSOs, governments and donors have the capacity to turn-around how social change happens in the region. While some of their strategies will require funding as the challenges have highlighted, much more can be done beyond the dollar to drive a sustainable governance agenda in West Africa.  Examples of recommendations include the fact that donor agencies should systematically position themselves as a force of influence with the ability and capacity to fast track open government agendas spearheaded by reputable national CSOs. West Africa governments should set up a system of peer learning, where a network of local state officials who are champions of TPA governance, could share their knowledge, experience and mentor other local officials. A recommendation for CSO’s is that they should include technical issues around open governance in media trainings and in their TPA programmes to improve media reporting standards.