Tag Archives: Twaweza

by

Accountability as a contested concept

In the past week, I’ve read several sets of interesting commentaries on the notion of accountability, particularly with reference to foreign aid. Together, they highlight the extent to which “accountability” has become a term much like “democracy” — evocative, normatively attractive, but employed with so many different intentions that it’s almost impossible to know what it means.

Albert Van Zyl at the International Budget Project highlights the completion of a series of important case studies concerning how civil society organizations in poor countries “hold their governments to account for the use of public resources.” (One of those is a study of HakiElimu, an educational initiative in Tanzania, formerly led by Rakesh Rajani, who now directs Twaweza.) But in a broader discussion of accountability, Van Zyl  also points out that citizens in donor countries remain unclear about the size, role, and impact of foreign aid. Most readers will be familiar with the severe over-estimates that citizens in rich countries make concerning the size of the foreign aid budget as a share of total government spending. Along these lines, he writes,

Just as citizens in poor countries don’t want to be passive recipients of development, citizens in rich countries say that don’t want to be passive providers of development either. They can and want to understand much more about where there funds are going, how decisions were made, what the impact was and why.  Ultimately better communication to citizens in rich countries could lead to an exciting and dynamic new form of development with much tighter linkages between citizens in rich and poor countries.

Meanwhile, IRIN, the UN News and Analysis service, also recently published an article entitled, “Accountability – what’s in a word?” Their discussion of the diffuse understanding of the notion of accountability reminded me of David Collier and Steve Levitsky’s classic World Politics article, “Democracy with Adjectives.”

The concept of “accountability”, like much humanitarian vocabulary, can be complex and elusive. Some organizations, like Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) do not even like using the word.
“We’re not very comfortable with the term ‘accountability’, because. we are still not very clear on what we mean by accountability,” said Caroline Abu-Sada, coordinator of MSF’s research unit in Geneva.
And if understanding its meaning in English can be a struggle, translating it into other languages can be near impossible.
For example, “In French, it’s absolutely untranslatable,” Abu-Sada told IRIN. The best she and her colleagues have come up with is “redevabilité” – “it’s an unpronounceable, very bizarre word. It’s not really user-friendly.”

IRIN goes on to document the wide variety of ways in which aid and development organizations have defined the term, a few of which I paste here:

“the responsible use of power.” (Humanitarian Accountability Partnership – HAP)

“first and foremost about communication with affected people.” (Jacobo Quintanilla, director of humanitarian information projects, Internews)
“about beneficiaries participating in the process of improving their situation.” (International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies)

“leadership/governance; transparency; feedback and complaints; participation; design, monitoring and evaluation.” (Inter-Agency Standing Committee Sub-Group on Accountability to Affected Populations)
“a shared commitment to learning as the path to excellence and to integrity in fulfilling commitments to stakeholders.” (World Vision International’s Accountability Framework)

… All of these are only loosely connected to the definitions provided by the World Bank in their landmark 2004 World Development Report, which contained an extended and thoughtful discussion of accountability.

So where does that leave us? At the very least, when the term is used, a precise definition is needed, because the term, to quote Giovanni Sartori, has been stretched to the point that the intrinsic connotation is not clear. Given the ubiquity of the term, I suspect further analysis would reveal that much scholarly and policy analysis has suffered from unrecognized confusion.

by

Monitoring and evaluation job opportunity with Twaweza, East Africa

I met with Rakesh Rajani, Head of Twaweza, yesterday in Nairobi. He is looking for a newLearning, Monitoring and Evaluation manager who would report to him. They want to hire a highly skilled individual with a minimum of an MA, and a PhD is preferred. Sounds like a very neat job (and our research team would be working closely with whomever he hires, so I have high hopes that he will identify someone great).

A full job description is attached here.

by

Twaweza responds to Ugandan police seizure of calendars

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the Ugandan police’s seizure of Twaweza-produced calendars promoting active citizenship. This week,  Twaweza’s Uganda country director spoke out about the calendar’s intended message and why he believes the police should release the calendars.

What reason did the police give to impound a consignment of Twaweza calendars?

They say the calendars contained messages which could incite the public. But we think this is a message that tells citizens to wake up to the realisation that they have to change their livelihoods not to wait for leaders, governments or NGOs to solve their problems. We believe empowering these people can help them make changes in their lives. We think this is a misunderstanding that the police should not have caused.

So do you don’t (sic.) believe what the police say about your calendars?

Absolutely not; we think the calendars are not inciting as they want you to believe. It is colossal misunderstanding on their part.  There are no political innuendos in these calendars.

The full interview can be found here

The country director argues in the interview that the calendars were not intended to be “partisan” or “political,” but rather to encourage citizens to be change-makers in their own lives. Fair enough. But given that there was absolutely no suggestion of inciting violence in these calendars, their confiscation is a clear denial of open and critical political discourse. Irrespective of the goals or intentions of the sponsoring organization, the Ugandan state’s actions contravened any pretense of upholding democratic norms.

by

Ugandan government impounds Twaweza citizenship calendars

Last Friday, the Ugandan government confiscated 700,000 calendars produced by Twaweza. As far as I know, they remain in police custody.

The calendar was an effort to realize Twaweza’s mission to promote government accountability. Phrases such as, “who will change your world in 2012?” and photographs of various government officials were intended to provide information and to increase citizen awareness.

According to an article in The Monitor, police have charged that the calendars incite violence. More stories and debate about this incident can be found here.

 

by

Twaweza offices flooded

I was sorry to hear that the Twaweza offices in Dar es Salaam were flooded last week — causing no injuries, but severe property damage. Twaweza is an organization I have been working with since the beginning of the year (on a project along with Dan Posner and Lily Tsai), and their main goal is to empower citizens in Africa to improve their lives, particularly in areas such as education, water provision, and health. From the update on their website, it sounds like good citizens did a great job of evacuating people and cleaning things up. But I wish them luck in getting things back in order to continue their important work early in 2012.

by

Uwezo Tanzania Assessment Documents Disappointing Education Results

Yesterday, Uwezo released the results of its 2011 assessment of the educational attainment of Tanzanian children — it’s a comprehensive study, which covered more than 70,000 households in a nationally representative sample.

2011 Uwezo Assessment

As in Kenya, the report shows a high degree of variation across the country… but the results are generally quite disappointing given the investments in and attention to educational development in recent years.

In Tanzania, large numbers of children are not acquiring very basic literacy and numeracy skills until very late in their education, and even then, many still lack those skills. As late as standard 7, the majority of school children cannot read a very basic story in English — one geared toward the level of a standard 2 learner.

The report is available here and from the Uwezo website.