New tools help citizens rate whether authorities are delivering on their promises
DAKAR (TrustLaw) - The growing use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in Africa offers great potential for citizens to assess their governments’ commitment to good governance and accountability, experts say.
A slew of ICT platforms, many of which use innovative crowd sourcing techniques, have been developed to track delivery of projects and budgets in a bid to improve governance.
One such platform, iWatch is currently being rolled out in Nigeria.
“It is a citizen’s monitoring tool to watch government performance all over Nigeria by allowing people to rate and comment if promises that are made are effectively fulfilled by authorities,” Eleso Adetunjie, an executive of Co-Creation Hub, the group that launched iWatch, told TrustLaw.
Citizens are encouraged to log on to the website, comment and to provide answers to questions about the effectiveness of some government policies and projects listed on the site.
“It offers direct feedback to the government and holds them accountable because if they promised, for instance, to deliver treated mosquito nets and people report that they never saw a single net in their district, civil society and citizens can demand for an explanation,” Adetunjie said.
Although platforms such as iWatch have been praised for promoting broad-based engagement through digital media, experts say technology alone cannot be the solution to bad governance in Africa.
Poor access to some of the technologies threatens to undermine their participatory ideals.
For example, the number of internet users in Africa still lags far behind the rest of the world, and only the elites can use platforms exclusively based on the web.
Developers of tools like iWatch say they are aware of these limitations and are working to incorporate a variety of tools including cell phones in their systems.
Many more people in Africa have access to a mobile phone than the internet, Adetunjie said.
“Africa is the world’s fastest growing mobile market and if you are looking at ways that governments are interacting with the people of Africa, then doing so via SMS makes the most sense,” said Sean McDonald, a director of operations at Frontline SMS which has developed software that enables groups to use mobile technology for campaigns.
The software has been used in Kenya, Uganda and Zambia to alert authorities when pharmacies run out of essential medicines, in a project known as Stop Stock-out.
Civil society group representatives visit clinics and pharmacies and report back via SMS on whether medication which the government claims to have supplied is available.
“People were able to see over a course of time what drugs were available and were then able to hold their governments accountable for the promises they were making about availability of medicines,” McDonald added.
Some critics say many of the failings discovered are not addressed, because such schemes do not involve governments and do not feed into appropriate institutional channels.
Civil society groups at a recent forum in Dakar on assessment of governance in Africa, organised by the U.N. Development Programme, said that individuals and groups had to take the initiative to give feedback to governments about governance issues.
“Technology is not what ends bad governance but it is a channel to amplify the concerns of citizens about the way they are governed,” said Philip Thigo, a programme associate at Social Development Network (SODNET) in Kenya.
SODNET has launched Huduma, a platform where citizens can highlight their concerns over issues of governance via web and mobile. However, civil society groups play an important role as they process this information from citizens and present them to local government authorities.
“It is time we accept to use technology to respond to citizen’s needs in real time. Isn’t that what governance is about?” Thigo said.
(Editing by Alex Whiting)
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