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ANSA-Africa Full Circle Newsletter: October 2007
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The recipient of the first ANSA-Africa grant of US$45 000 is the Municipal Development Partnership for Eastern and Southern Africa (MDP-ESA), which will use the funding to launch an international workshop on participatory budgeting – the process whereby community members and municipal government officials learn to work together in deciding how financial allocations are spent.
As MDP-ESA says in its grant application: “As democratisation and decentralisation reforms advance around the globe, local governments and citizens are creating new channels of dialogue in local governance and service delivery. Under this context, participatory budgeting is rapidly gaining attention from governments, civil society, and international development agencies as an effective platform for strengthening citizens’ voice in budget planning and delivery of public goods and services.”
The international workshop on participatory budgeting and a second seminar planned in a Francophone African country will both be held next year. The workshop will be designed to pilot the process of peer-to-peer learning and co-operation, with systematic follow-up. “Ultimately,” says MDP-ESA, this event aims at catalysing efforts to strengthen the relations among and beyond African countries, by encouraging direct experience exchange between government and non-government policy makers and practitioners.”
Congratulations to MDP-ESA and all the best for a successful project. There will be more grants awarded in the future. If your application was not selected this round, we encourage you to resubmit your proposal. Or if you have a new project in mind that would benefit from a small grant from ANSA-Africa, please contact us at for application guidelines.
In the month just past…
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Thank you to those who have contacted us with feedback on this newsletter. In the last few weeks we have received emails from people involved in the SADC journalists’ network, the Development Bank of Southern Africa, the Overseas Development Institute in London, and other organisations with an interest in governance and social accountability.
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Full Circle is now also distributed in French and Portuguese. The first Francophone and Lusophone editions of the newsletter went out last month. We welcome the contributions of all Africans to ANSA-Africa’s development and we hope that expansion into these languages will facilitate this process.
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You can now download ANSA’s promotional documents from the website: www.ansa-africa.net. These pdf files summarise ANSA-Africa’s goals and objectives. Please feel free to distribute or email them to anyone who you feel would be interested in ANSA-Africa.
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September was a milestone month for the ANSA-Africa website. We recorded a record number of hits: 41899 – the most visitors to the ANSA-Africa website in a single month since its launch at the end of March. Of the 941 site visits, 493 were from Africa, 248 from the Americas, 139 from Europe and the reminder from Asia and Oceania. Most of the visits from outside Africa were new, which means the word about social accountability in Africa is spreading around the world.
In the month ahead…
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ANSA-Africa’s partnership building team is in Europe this month to introduce ANSA-Africa to funding agencies, government representatives and other organisations with an interest in seeing this continent move forward in its development goals. To view the materials ANSA-Africa is using to define our aims and work, please visit www.ansa-africa.net.
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ASAP – Africa’s Social Accountability Profile – is the name of the scoping study undertaken by ANSA-Africa. The desktop phase of this study will be completed this month, which means our research team will be examining existing information from the Internet and other published sources, before taking their work out into the field. The seven countries involved in this initial phase of ASAP are: Egypt, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Senegal, Tanzania and Togo.
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Now we would like to ask you for a small favour: As you know, one of ANSA’s purposes is to build connections between different areas of need and expertise in different techniques involved in social accountability. To do this job more effectively, we need to know the answers to two questions:
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What training can you offer to the network? This could be in person, in the form of published materials, recorded seminars on videotape or digital media, and so on. We simply need to know what resources are available across the continent. If you are not sure your area of expertise falls strictly within social accountability, please contact us anyway; we can help you determine how your experience could help others.
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What training would you like to receive from the network? If you want to bring new initiatives in social accountability or the improvement of government service delivery to your community, please let us know what you need to get started or to continue your initiatives. If you feel you need guidance but don’t know exactly what form that guidance should take, please contact us anyway, and tell us what you have achieved so far and what you feel you should do next. We may be able to help you identify the areas of training you need.
We expect the ANSA-Africa network to grow and strengthen as people like you take the time to share from your own experiences in social accountability – both good and bad. Please contact us at: .
Yours for the growth of social accountability,
The ANSA-Africa Team
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