This review assesses one of DFIDs empowerment and accountability programmes that aims to strengthen citizen engagement with government. It looks at two contrasting African countries, Ghana and Malawi.
The review examines two grant-making funds for civil society organisations (CSOs) and a project that supports community monitoring of local services. These programmes support a wide range of activities, from helping local communities to become more engaged in the running of local schools to civil society campaigns on the management of the oil and gas sector in Ghana.
Key findings:
- Empowering people is a necessary part of the development process. More empowered communities being able to interact more effectively with government is a precondition for the achievement of many development goals. However, empowering communities to demand things that local authorities have no capacity to provide risks causing disillusionment or even conflict.
- DFID country offices are defaulting to large, competitive CSO grant-making instruments, as a familiar programme type. In practice, establishing and managing large grant-making instruments to an acceptable fiduciary standard is a very demanding undertaking. Under pressure from DFID to compress their management costs, the contractors are forced into fairly standardised approaches to grant-making, despite the diverse needs of their grantees. This results in a scattered portfolio of small-scale CSO projects that are very difficult to mesh into a strategic whole.
- In Ghana and Malawi programme objectives are extremely broad, ranging from improving services in particular communities, through influencing government decisions, to changing the nature of the political system itself. The theory of change, as to how relatively small-scale support for CSOs will achieve these higher-level goals, is not well articulated.
- There are two distinct sets of objectives in DFID’s empowerment and accountability work, corresponding broadly to the World Bank’s distinction between the ‘short route’ of direct citizen engagement with service providers and the ‘long route’ of enhancing government responsiveness and accountability through the democratic process.
- Social accountability initiatives are primarily useful for identifying and addressing inefficiencies, inequities and petty corruption in the delivery of development programmes and public services. They do not usually involve changes in government policies, laws or budgets. Most government agencies have at least some interest in increasing their public standing by improving their performance. Where such an interest exists, they are likely to recognise the value of community feedback on their performance. Accountability can thus emerge, not just through formal means of redress for poor performance but also through the institutionalisation of constructive interaction and feedback between communities and government.
Recommendations:
- DFID needs to develop a clearer and more realistic set of goals and a stronger set of criteria for deciding how best to achieve these goals. Promoting constructive community engagement with government around the delivery of public services and development programmes should be the principal focus of DFID’s social accountability programmes and a shared goal with its sector programmes.
- When scaling up successful social accountability initiatives, direct grants to national CSOs to work with local communities are likely to be more effective than competitive grant-making.
- DFID’s support for CSO advocacy and influencing at the national level should be more targeted, with smaller portfolios, longer partnerships and more tailored capacity building support.
- Future social accountability programmes should be designed with the flexibility to test different approaches and scale up successful initiatives. DFID’s central policy team should guide this process of structured learning and ensure the continuous sharing of lessons among country offices and managing contractors and with relevant sector programmes.
