Civic Engagement and Governance

At Imagine Africa Foundation, we believe that fundamental aspect of a democratic state is the right of its citizens to participate in decision-making processes. The success of development and participatory governance depends on both a robust state and an active civil society with healthy levels of civic engagement. Empowered and active citizenship is an end in itself: essential for inclusive growth and national ownership.

Accountability has become a key focus of debate about the future direction and shape of the development agenda as the target date for the Millennium Development Goals draws closer. Despite frequent calls for the inclusion of an accountability dimension in the country, there have been few attempts at systematic analysis of what accountability-for-development means. Further, analysis has not addressed which accountability frameworks are likely to be effective and why, and what an effective accountability framework in terms of constitutional/policy commitments might look like. IAF works with counterpart agencies and development partners, as well as the communities, to answer these gaps in knowledge and take a holistic approach with accountability analysis. We focus on some of the challenges and opportunities in developing an integrated community-driven accountability framework/mechanism, and their impact for citizen participation based on some first-hand experiences. We work with all stakeholders to share their expertise on how the nature of the interface between citizen and government has an impact on sustainable development initiatives and how it relates to accountability and transparency.

For example, the youth aged 18-35 comprise three-quarters of the population in Kenya and are a great potential source of social and economic energy for the country. Yet, much of this energy is untapped.  Older citizens hold de facto budgetary decision-making power. Culturally, the older generations’ views are prioritized due to the perception that they have more wisdom and experience than the youth. In urban settings, the younger population have greater access to information than their rural-based colleagues and may be more engaged in decision making processes. However, this largely depends on the modes of communication and engagement employed by the governments.

In view of these in 2015, Imagine Africa Foundation (IAF) partnered with Homabay, Kisumu, Lamu and Tana River county governments to design and implement a community-cantered approach to engaging Kenyan youth. A series of workshops were held to solicit the opinions of young women and men about how youth can work with their local governments to assess community priorities and better allocate resources. The workshops were meant to open a dialogue as well as to provide both sides with a better understanding of one another, as well as provide the youth with the tools and resources necessary for them to engage their governments. The local county governments made sure to select a socio-economically diverse and gender-balanced group of 50 young people aged 18 to 35 years old representative of each county’s population. An intense two-day training provided an opportunity for the participants to efficiently co-design local and tangible solutions to encourage participation in public affairs with the local officials.

This was primarily justified by the observation that the most radical change in decentralized governance in sub-Saharan Africa was enshrined in Kenya’s Constitution of 2010 with the creation of 47 local governments and fiscal transfers from Nairobi. The reforms are designed to make the government more responsive to people’s needs. It has led to renovations of existing facilities and more community-focused projects with Kenyan citizens as the main beneficiaries. However, these enhancements in participation, transparency and accountability have not yet changed engagement with the large, majority-youth population.

Based on these youth-led discussions, the following action items were recommended.

• The counties could prioritize engagement and training by organizing youth-cantered workshops to highlight how public participation is feasible at all levels, from the village to the county. The governments could provide training for youth on how to self-organize and turn their ideas into actionable proposals.
• Second, counties should make available information about current, existing youth participation opportunities. This could be achieved by advertising meetings – their agenda and actors – across social media and public forums, using language youth understand, and developing a youth-cantered communication strategy for government policies and initiatives.
• Third, counties could grant youth more responsibility over budgets and policies by providing youth-led spaces for them to mobilize their peers and aggregate their preferences by directly allocating them budgets and advocate for and design policies with them.

With additional support, it has been observed that some of these recommendations are being gradually implemented by the respective county governments thus developing a firm foundation for community-driven accountability and transparency mechanisms at grassroots level.