Democracy in Africa is under threat but emerging innovations improve accountability and participation.
Author: Alain Metodjo
Against a backdrop of political disaffection in Africa, initiatives to involve citizens in managing the common good are emerging.
Democracy is still being questioned around the world. As a result of modern-day political disaffection, most Africans feel they belong to something other than a national community. Faced with this disillusionment, the question arises: How do citizens get involved in public decision-making? Many democratic innovation initiatives rose. This concept of democratic innovations includes ‘institutions that have been specifically designed to increase and deepen citizen participation in the political decision-making process’, according to Smith Graham.1
Africa hosts long-time participation institutions, such as Kgotla in Botswana or Palaver Tree in West Africa. This tradition makes the setup of any consultations easier on the continent. From Citizen Assemblies in South Africa to Citizen Juries for managing the Constituency Development Fund in Malawi, via the Kaduna State Open Government Initiative in Nigeria and Town Hall in Ghana, many projects abound to bring citizens closer to the decision-making processes.
I want to shed light on two initiatives in West Africa. Citizen’s Bureau in Togo works as a civic office to receive citizens' opinions at the grassroots level. The Collaborative Legislation in Burkina Faso, initiated by the Parliament, aimed to place the inhabitants at the centre of the draft of the bill. However, as the British historian Lord Acton reflected:
“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
In this perspective, democracy cannot flourish without checks and balances for much more transparency in public administration. Moreover, it will discuss these practices and the best strategies to make progress and help citizens hold governments accountable for their actions and be part of the decision-making processes.
At the core of the political system, governments feel the need to associate citizens with the table of political decisions within the system. In this case, political participation often goes smoothly. In Togo, at the grassroots level, the Citizens’ Bureau is provided by the law.2 The text states:
“A citizen’s office shall be set up. Citizens have the right to refer matters to local elected representatives on issues and subjects that concern them. This referral is made through the Citizen’s Bureau. The Citizen’s Bureau is a local institution that monitors local public action by citizens. It is a centre for listening to and collecting the expectations, concerns, and suggestions of the local authority’s citizens. The procedures for organising and operating the citizen’s office shall be specified by order of the minister responsible for decentralisation.”3
The majority of municipalities have waited for this ministerial decree, which sets out the operationalisation of the office. Even when this decree was signed, many local governments hadn’t yet established this Citizen’s Bureau. However, with the help of German cooperation, 10 pilot communes have been granted an exemption and have tested this innovative democratic body.
The Citizen’s Bureau is a facilitator of territorial social cohesion, acting as an intermediary between elected representatives and citizens. It is a sort of “local mediator” that works to achieve three main objectives. Firstly, it acts as a conduit for information about local life and as a forum for citizens to raise issues, so that managers can be held to account. In its accountability function, it is seen as a tool for citizen monitoring of public action. Secondly, it serves as a framework for consultation and concertation for citizens wishing to give their opinions and become involved in local management. Also, intended to be a crucible for decision-making, the Citizen’s Bureau should be used to the full for the co-production of public decision-making. In practice, however, while citizens can formulate collective inspirations and aspirations, their expertise as users remains to be fully exploited.
Three major lessons have emerged from the trial phase:
Other communes can learn from these cases. After all, these localities have plenty of resources to draw on to strengthen local participatory innovations. Finally, as the Citizen’s Bureau coordinator is paid by the municipality, he or she attends municipal staff meetings. For this reason, some people question his neutrality. By being hierarchically under the mayor, his role as a “local mediator” is altered in the eyes of others.
It would be interesting to find a formula that would guarantee his payment directly from the central government budget and give him a minimum of leeway about the municipal administration.
In Burkina Faso, despite the government de facto, the Assembly wants to "legislate differently." The country wants its citizens to be more involved in the draft bill. The leaders want the people to write their future together.
“Laws made in air-conditioned offices don't stand up to the sun. They often melt away.”
So says Ousmane Bougouma, the speaker of the transitional legislative assembly in Burkina Faso.4
He sees himself as sowing the seeds of democratic innovations in Burkina Faso. His leitmotif is the co-production of the bill. He desires a new legislative culture. The country wants to renew its legislative practices. “In the absence of direct democracy, we need to know how to listen to the people at the grassroots level so that we have laws that are consistent with their realities and that are not misapplied”, thinks the speaker.
He cites as an example the Law on Pastoralism, which defines the timeframe at which animals could be taken to watercourses as diurnal, i.e during the day. However, in arid or desert areas where the heat is very intense, the animals rest during the day and are taken to waterholes as soon as the sun goes down. The working hours of 7 am to 6 pm were the opposite of what happens on the ground. More than ever, therefore, it is necessary to involve the affected parties in the public policy process. That is strongly and unequivocally true.
To this end, the transitional legislative assembly draufted the bill on property development with the stakeholders. For more than a month and a half, it listened to people and professionals in the sector to define the procedures and practices to be followed and to define the terms and practices appropriate to the local sociology and practices.
Furthermore, the authorities have drawn up an action plan for stabilisation and development. This document contains proposals for reforms designed to shape the country's institutional, economic, and security framework. It has organised consultation days for the country's forty-five provinces, in conjunction with the regional governors. A total of 7,000 people were consulted to assess the reforms suggested by the Executive and formulate proposals.
In addition, after the provincial stage, the focus shifted to the regional level. Days of exchange with MPs were held in the 13 regions of Burkina Faso. Governors, MPs, and citizens had the opportunity to interact. At the Hauts Bassins stage, held in Bobo-Dioulasso, the head of the parliamentary delegation stressed that the aim of these meetings was ‘to gather specific regional and local concerns because the nation is diverse and dynamic. The needs and aspirations of fellow citizens vary from region to region, and it is crucial to take these differences into account to ensure fair representation and effective governance, he believes.5
According to the procedural note, the participants were made up of: ‘representatives of the provinces' driving forces, appointed at the end of the provincial consultations held between 5 and 15 June 2023 to represent the voice of the province's driving forces; representatives of universities and research centres based in the region; the members of the Regional Concertation Frameworks exclusively representing the driving forces (religious notabilities, customary and traditional notabilities, leaders of regional civil society organisations in the province (trade unions, associations, women's representatives, youth representatives, representatives of the rural world, representatives of people living with disabilities), political parties and any other person or social group whose presence is deemed important’.
These days were rich in debate and provided an opportunity to gather proposals on all aspects of the reforms. What's more, the ‘forces vives’, drawing on their realities, put forward proposals for action and innovation to make the reforms more relevant to people's everyday lives.
For Ousmane Bougouma, collaborative legislation needs to be more ambitious. ‘But we can't bring everyone together,’ he thinks. That's why he is launching a ‘Platform for Participatory Legislation’. In this way, the diaspora, young people, technicians, and other resource persons or experts in specific sectors may be able to formulate proposals for all the laws studied by the Chamber. All drafts will be posted online. Contributions will be taken into account and discussed.
Even if governments make their own "democratic innovations”, the risk of manipulation cannot be ruled out. Those loyal to the system cannot express themselves without frustrating the rulers. The symbolic domination or symbolic violence (Bourdieu) they exercise over themselves could facilitate a biased consultation process, a pure window dressing tool or tokenism.
Democracy is more than just voting; it actively involves participating in policymaking and holding politicians accountable. Enhancing democracy in Africa can be inspired by encouraging citizens to contribute to their communities, local areas, and countries. As political disengagement grows, democratic innovations can help foster a sense of belonging among citizens, promote participation, and reignite democracy in Africa. Young people, women, and minorities must be involved in the policymaking process and ensure government accountability. With a large percentage (70%) of the African population being under 30 years old, their involvement is crucial.
Encouraging citizen engagement or participation at the local level, rooted in local values and cultures, can be a huge incentive for collective action to improve citizenship. Transferring power and resources from national to local governments is essential for grassroots democracy to thrive as a democratic culture. Decentralisation processes are vital for strengthening democratic practices. It is imperative to empower local democracy and enable people to take ownership of their citizenship. Local governments and civil society can serve as checks and balances when formal institutions fail to hold governments accountable.
A democracy without good governance could not survive. It is worth improving citizens’ commitment and empowering them. Citizens can monitor public action in their areas or localities. Citizens monitoring, or citizen control, of public action, refers to all initiatives by civil society or citizens aiming to ‘control’ the action of central governments or local authorities. Its ambition is to foster a culture of accountability. In other words, it encourages public authorities to be accountable. In addition, the monitoring offers citizens an opportunity to assess public management.
Faced with the twin weaknesses of representative democracy and trust in institutions, citizens are losing interest in politics. But in the face of this disaffection, citizens and civil society players are looking for new ways to influence political decision-making. Citizen control of public action is part of this dynamic. It offers itself as an instrument of democratic innovation for citizens. How can they ‘control’ the actions of those who govern the city? Based on this, citizen monitoring is a response to all the initiatives seeking to find out exactly how those who govern the state, both at the central and local authority levels, are being managed.
This control aims to foster a culture of accountability. In other words, it encourages public authorities to value transparency and to be accountable for their mandate or to their representatives. The powerful legal source of this control remains Article 14 of the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen. It states that ‘all citizens have the right to ascertain, themselves or through their representatives, the need for public contributions and to monitor their use’. In addition, the African Charter on Human and Peoples‘ Rights, adopted in 1981 by the Organisation of African Unity, protects citizens’ accountability.
Development partners, such as the World Bank and the UNDP, are making control one of the conditions of their programs. Social responsibility for public policies is becoming a requirement of development programs. Indeed, transparency and citizen involvement are required, as they are closely linked to governance criteria. Drawing on the terms of social responsibility, these institutions demand that citizens take part in their decision-making and their implementation. In the same vein, monitoring offers itself as a tool of choice in the hands of citizens in their quest for a better quality of life, better governance, and more effective development and empowerment of citizens.
Citizen monitoring can only thrive in societies where a minimum of freedoms are in place. There are three key factors for its success: a political framework conducive to democratic expression and individual freedoms; transparent and inclusive rules for the conduct of public programs; and complete mastery of the monitoring process, in terms of both rights and duties, by the citizens responsible for implementing citizen monitoring. However, the controllers, in this case, the citizens, will have to be genuinely credible in their actions, immune to the lure of ease, and aware of the challenges of civic responsibility.
To bring this work on citizen participation in Africa to a close, I would say that without transparency in public management, democracy cannot thrive. African citizens need to make a great effort to get this done. The processes of democratisation and decentralisation facilitate this quest for citizen monitoring. Citizens have a right to information, including the budget and minutes of council meetings. Most constitutions embrace this fundamental right to transparency and citizen involvement in public management. Development partners are incorporating citizen control clauses into their governance and funding criteria. “Power should be a check to power,” argued Montesquieu, and John Adams said, “Power must never be trusted without a check.” In many African countries, the bench of countervailing institutions is packed by the ruler’s devotees. Citizens have duties to substitute them to prevent the abuse of power and the governance of public goods.
Notes
1. Graham, S. 2009, Democratic Innovations. Designing Institutions for Citizen Participation, p.1
2. of Law 2019-006 of June 26, 2019, “amending Law No. 2007-011 of March 13, 2007, on decentralisation and local freedoms as amended by Law No. 2018-003 of January 31, 2018."
3. Article 17 of this law.
4. I met him in July 2023 for an interview
5. According to the note of the Chamber.
Alain Metodjo is the founder and CEO of Africapols. He earned his doctorate from the Sorbonne University in Paris as a political scientist. He taught political communication, international relations, and influence at Catholic Western University. In Senegal, he lectured at Dakar Science Po on Constitutional Law, Decentralisation, and Local Powers.
The publisher is Citizen Network Research. Citizen Participation in Africa © Alain Metodjo 2024.
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