Civil Society Empowerment for Poverty Reduction in Sub-Saharan Africa CODESRIA 2000
1. Background The Civil Society Empowerment for Poverty Reduction in Sub-Saharan Africa Programme (hereafter termed Civil Society) is a partnership project between CODESRIA (as the Implementing agency) and UNDP (as the funding agency), which has started on January 1998. It needs to be emphasized here that this project is an important initiative for both CODESRIA and UNDP. For UNDP, it contributes to its global effort of promoting an alternative development paradigm: participatory and sustainable development. And for CODESRIA, it fits in with its mission, mandate, experience and current efforts to participate in the strengthening of the emerging African civil society. In this regard, it needs to be remembered that under the auspices of CODESRIA a considerable amount of scholarly work on the development of Africa is already being done. Indeed CODESRIA is most probably the leading pan African institution which has generated the largest amount of research work on civil society, social movements and social development in Africa. CODESRIA networks cover the whole of the Continent and the Council has a lot of experience in co-ordinating multinational networks and in running complex regional programmes. In this connection, one of the main objectives that CODESRIA has set for itself for the next five years is to link research much more closely to the emerging African civil society, not only by defining a new research agenda where civil society features prominently, but also by making research results more accessible to civil society, and by initiating participatory research projects with civil society organisations. This civil society programme is therefore being launched at a very opportune moment for CODESRIA and for Africa. One of the major outcomes of the CODESRIA/UNDP negotiations was that a decision was made to split the three elements of the Programme: Training ; Exchange ; Observatory. CODESRIA was given the role of implementing the Observatory component of the Programme, while retaining its role as coordinator of the whole Programme, as well providing intellectual leadership at all levels. In making this decision, it was argued that CODESRIA strength lay mainly in research, intellectual leadership and coordinating multinational networks. It is against this background that the Programme has come to focus on the setting up and operationalising an Observatory. 2. Civil Society Programme : The Observatory Main objective The main objective of the Observatory is to strengthen Civil Society in African countries, to conceptualize, monitor and organize, with a view to effectively contributing to reversing the processes of impoverishment in Sub-Saharan Africa. The idea therefore, is to use the Observatory as an instrument for collecting and disseminating relevant information that can contribute to the attainment of this broad objective. 2
Mission To produce analyses of major economic, social and political trends and of the evolution and dynamics of the associative movement within civil society; To produce analyses of the most effective participatory intervention methods and approaches for the target societies; To ensure dissemination of all data and publications produced under the Observatory; To identify gaps and critical issues that need attention and research priority; To initiate and facilitate dialogue and coordinated action between civil society actors, governments and donor partners for poverty eradication in Africa. Structure The Observatory is made up of a network of analysis cells located at three levels: At the national level through the National Analysis Cells ; At the sub-regional level through the Sub regional Workshops and reports ; At the regional level through the CODESRIA secretariat, regional and Steering Committee meetings. Activities of the Observatory At a national level The national analytical cells will have to: Conduct rapid country assessments (state of the art reviews) in order to determine: the state of civil society and of civil society efforts in fighting poverty. Towards this end, small groups of strategically placed people or Tasks Forces will be commissioned to examine: Perceptions û how civil society is perceived, and how it perceives itself as well as how poverty is understood in the country. Civil society performance in terms of job creation, formal and non-formal education and provision of other services and facilities; environmental protection; prevention of diseases; recuperating and rehabilitating in sustainable ways, the environment, institutions destroyed as a result of wars and conflicts; child soldiers; orphans, the agenda; the disabled; refugees; AIDS patients, etc. monitor state policies and efforts in dealing with rehabilitation, removing obstacles, enhancing capacities, creating an enabling environment through legislation, facilitating access to resources (credit, etc.) and encouraging partnerships and creating synergy. examine and analyse the dynamics and performance of institutions and organizations set up with a view to monitoring poverty, especially 1/2áobservatoriesá+ of Poverty Alleviation, of conflicts and of democratic transitions in various African countries. 3
review the experience of the UNDP initiated National Long Term Prospective Studies (NLTPS); The rapid assessments will enable the observatory, and through it, civil society organisations, governments and donor agencies to see what exactly has been done; what are the ongoing programmes and efforts, and what are the areas where interventions need to be done, or improved. The assessment will also highlight areas and cases where there has been success and /or setbacks, including implementation and methodological problems. In a nutshell, we envision, the main objectives of the CODESRIA Civil Society Observatory as being to: Monitor social trends and generate information that could be used by both the larger civil society, and governments in the effort to eradicate poverty; Produce information that could be published by CODESRIA and or with a local publishing house as country reports or occasional or discussion papers; Disseminate results and initiate discussions (through seminars and workshops), facilitate exchanges among civil society organisations and facilitate the social dialogue on civil society empowerment and poverty at national level. At a regional level As the coordinator of the Observatory, CODESRIA will : Coordinate the work of all analysis cells, including publication, translation and dissemination of their outputs; Prepare occasional discussion and policy papers ; Publish two newsletters each year ; Organise analysis cells Subregional workshops ; Organise one regional meeting each year ; Organise one steering committee meeting each year ; Commission annual publication on Social Trends and Civil Society in Africa South of the Sahara. 3. Unit of analysis The basic unit of analysis are the 15 pilot African countries, which are the following: Western Africa Sub region: Burkina Faso, Guinea, Mali, Nigeria and Senegal ; Central Africa Sub region: Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Republic of Central Africa and Rwanda ; Eastern and Southern Africa Sub region: Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, Uganda and Zimbabwe. 4
4. Outputs State of the art review ; Thematic studies ; Newsletter ; Sub regional reports ; Policy papers ; Regional report ; Annual publication Because of budgetary constraints, we have proposed to reduce the number of countries from 15 to 12 5