This paper reports on pilot projects in Nigeria and Tanzania that tested the potential for religious organisations to engage collaboratively in policy consultation processes. The cases showed that Faith-Based Organisations can cooperate across religious and denominational divides to assemble grassroots data on issues central to Poverty Reduction Strategy Processes (and their successors), analyse findings and present them to government. They demonstrate that similar projects could be implemented more widely. Positive influences on policy depend, among other things, on the power relations within religious organisations and between faith communities and the state.
The involvement of religious organisations (ROs) in policy consultations in Tanzania than Nigeria is generally weak, and not obviously influential. There are a number of possible reasons for this: uneasy relationships with governments; less than inclusive poverty reduction strategy paper (PRSP) processes; a shortage of skilled personnel and resources; and an inability to speak up in a way that could claim respect.
A pilot project in each country sought to assess whether it was possible to increase the capacity of ROs to contribute to policymaking, implementation, monitoring and evaluation. The projects provided operational funds, training and mentoring to Muslim and Christian organisations, supporting them to gather and analyse data on poor people’s opinions and to feed this into PRSP processes. Findings indicate that:
- Faith-based organisations can cooperate across religious divides to assemble data at the grassroots on issues central to PRSPs, and present them appropriately to government. This was more successful in Tanzania than Nigeria, where political upheavals and sensitive relations between religious organisations and the state posed problems.
- In both countries data were selected, analysed, written up and submitted to government. However, existing capacity was limited and the pilots could not overcome all the constraints.
- The submissions appeared to reflect the perspectives of ‘the poor’. However, care needs to be taken to clarify informants’ understandings of categories and terms such as ‘the poor’, ‘ordinary people’, ‘marginalised’ and ‘grass roots’.
- It is too soon to assess whether submissions have been followed up by participating organisations and have influenced policy.
It appears that the model piloted has the potential to be replicated in other contexts with some adjustments, and that it can be sustainable given necessary financial resources. In addition:
- The leaders of ROs in Nigeria and Tanzania are trusted by their constituencies as legitimate and honest representatives. However there is a difference between this and trusting them to represent the views of adherents rather than their own. Nevertheless, ROs are seen as standing out against corruption and for integrity.
- Although individual congregations are often present at the grassroots and integrated with communities, this is not necessarily true of ROs that focus on development.
- Whilst the approaches tested can help ROs to represent the poor, they should not always be singled out for support and should work with other types of civil society organisations. This is especially true in contexts where people working for any type of CSO are likely to be people of faith.
- There are some important issues beyond the scope of this research which also need addressing. These include the validity of the type of participation promoted by PRSP-type processes; and the nature of ROs’ relationship with technocratic development actors on the one hand, and representative politics on the other.
