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ANSA-Africa Full Circle Newsletter: September 2007
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Is social accountability really important in Africa? For instance, do social accountability strategies really help to create a better life for people at community and municipality level? One of ANSA-Africa's goals is to determine the scope of social accountability practices across the continent, and to begin to measure the changes these practices are bringing into society. To do so, we have launched a scoping study project: ASAP - Africa's Social Accountability Profile.
ASAP will begin the scoping study with an initial focus on seven countries: Mozambique, Malawi, Tanzania, Kenya, Senegal, Togo and Egypt. In future phases more countries will be added to the study to cover as much of the continent as possible. To ensure that ASAP takes your initiative into consideration, please email us about your work and contacts within your country, even if it is not part of the initial phase: .
ASAP already has good news about social accountability in Malawi. The first ASAP country report on this Malawi gives a positive overview of its vibrant social accountability fraternity, which has introduced effective initiatives in key development sectors such as poverty, health, education and agriculture. The social accountability practices introduced in Malawi - mainly budgetary analysis and expenditure tracking - have some already on their way to becoming institutionalised in the country. This is good news for social accountability becoming entrenched in the way government works with the people. The country report will be posted to www.ansa-africa.net in due course, so look out for it.
ANSA-Africa is not looking just into Africa to develop social accountability. In October, the ANSA management team will be sending representatives to Europe 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. ANSA-Africa has already been featured in key publications that reach this audience. In June, Growth and Responsibility, the magazine of the G8 Summit 2007, ran an article titled "Demanding good governance in Africa" and focusing on the work and aims of ANSA-Africa. In August, ANSA-Africa was again in the news in Capacity.org, the online magazine of capacity building organisations around the world. And this month, the Independent Development Review, published by DFID in the UK, will feature a one-page summary of ANSA-Africa. To view the materials ANSA-Africa is using to define our aims and work, please visit www.ansa-africa.net.
One of the reasons for raising funds is so that ANSA-Africa can support your social accountability initiatives in Africa. We received a number of proposals for the first ANSA-Africa grant and will announce the successful project after we have notified the recipient organisation. There will be more grants awarded in the future, and we encourage you to resubmit your proposal if it was not successful this round.
In the month just past…
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The ANSA-Africa executive committee met at the end of August to assess the grant proposals that were submitted, review ANSA's achievements so far and chart the way forward. ANSA-Africa has been in existence officially for only nine months, during which time this newsletter, the website and the ASAP scoping study have been launched. A source book will be launched soon, to provide guidelines for establishing and carrying forward social accountability good practice across Africa. As new funding is provided, we hope to see ANSA partnering with more locally based initiatives, to strengthen the social accountability network and establish Africa's capabilities and expertise in this area.
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Some recent additions to the website:
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ANSA-Africa's home page feature contains the keynote presentations made at a recent workshop in Addis Ababa. The case studies presented social accountability processes from Uganda, Senegal, Ethiopia and South Africa. We are pleased to note that visitors to our website are already accessing them heavily.
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A few highlights from the many new reports added during the last month:
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Monitoring usage of our web shows that users have a particular interest in documents posted in our toolkits section.
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, by email or by registering on the website, to let us know what your concerns are for your own community, what social accountability initiatives you have undertaken, and what new initiatives you would like to introduce. Again, you can email us at:
We look forward to hearing from you.
Yours for the growth of social accountability,
The ANSA-Africa Team
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