West and South African CSOs receive training on development effectiveness

Reality of Aid- Africa Network and Civil Society for Poverty-Reduction Zambia, organized a two and a half day training to build the capacity of West and Southern Africa sub region CSOs in order to catalyze their actions towards their own mobilization to structurally engage with the government on the national process for the implementation of the development effectiveness agenda in a sustainable manner. 

The aim of the training was to energize West and Southern Africa sub regional CSO engagement in the context of Nairobi commitments in not only fulfilling their commitments but also playing their role in looking at how monitoring the progress of its implementation will play out.

The training brought together 16 participants from Southern and West Africa. The training was held in Lusaka Zambia from 27th February to 1st March 2018.

The key objectives of the training were to 1) prepare the sub region’s CSOs to engage meaningfully with the government, donors, private sector, parliamentarians and other relevant stakeholders on Nairobi commitments and implementation including those that relate to providing enabling environment for CSOs; 2) equip CSOs with the capacity to monitor the progress of implementation of the Nairobi, including democratic ownership and human rights based approach to development; and, 3) train CSOs on monitoring compliance to the Istanbul Principles and CSO accountability.

Key elements covered in the training were:

• Recognition of the shrinking space for CSOs in Africa

• Refining monitoring framework to ensure it contributes to achievement of SDGs.

• Need to follow up on how monitoring frameworks are domesticated at country level.

• Importance of indicator 2 in measuring CSO accountability and effectiveness

• Importance of inclusive partnerships in implementing effective development cooperation agenda

• Need for awareness raising and advocacy on development effectiveness principles.

• Scaling up private sector engagement.

• Look at Busan principles and linkages to SDGs.

Research on inclusive partnerships ongoing

CPDE Africa is releasing a research which aims to bring out how the role of CSOs and other stakeholders in inclusive partnerships can be further strengthened as part of an effective development cooperation process and the post-2015 agenda. ROA Africa shall oversee the overall research assignment, and will use it to promote an evidence-based approach where we will draw on a rich source of experiences, generated in a few countries from all the four sub-regions, demonstrating the potential of Inclusive partnerships to enrich the development effectiveness agenda. This should be done with specific reference to the period since the Busan Partnership agreement in 2012 until present. 

The exercise has been rolled out in Namibia and will be rolled out in Ghana in February. The objectives of the research are:

• Assess the structural, legal, policy space and institutional framework for the existing partnership, indicating who the main players are

• Propose to ROA Africa specific actions that the multi stakeholders can take to ensure that they fully utilize the opportunities that inclusive partnerships present to promote development effectiveness at country level

• Submit well-written reports with key conclusions and recommendations to ROA Africa

For more information, contact Diana Mochoge, Reality of Aid Africa Network at diana@roaafrica.org