How Citizen Feedback Strengthens Governance Reform in Francophone Africa

Citizen feedback is helping many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa improve their overall governance and fight corruption. That good news was shared by some 90 representatives from government, civil society, the private sector, and the media from Francophone Benin, Burundi, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s capital of Kinshasa, and the DRC provinces of Bandundu, Katanga, and South-Kivu, who came together in Kinshasa to learn from each other and exchange their experiences.

A participant from Burundi, explained how civil society was actively involved with the national government in the organization of a nationwide governance survey. This diagnostic work, supported by the World Bank Institute and the Government of Belgium, identified a high level of perceived corruption in public services such as the police, customs, and tax administrations. 

 

In Benin, which undertook a similar survey, the most striking problems were found in areas such as public procurement for large construction projects, customs, and the justice sector. Amidou Adamou, Cabinet Director of the Ministry for Administrative and Institutional Reforms in Benin, reported on the survey and on Benin’s reform efforts.

 

Both participants, representing civil society and the public sector respectively, agreed that the surveys greatly helped their governments in drafting national action plans and in fine-tuning reforms.

 

These successes were instructive for participants like Valerien Kafira, PSRP Coordinator of the DRC province of South-Kivu, who said  this kind of assessment would help his post-conflict province in building institutions, setting reform priorities, and improving public service delivery.

 

A filmed country case study on Madagascar’s recent experience with governance reforms that was shown at the meeting featured Darwin, a citizen from Antananarivo, who was trying to get a construction permit for a new house without paying bribes. After several months of waiting, he still hadn’t succeeded in getting a permit.

 

 see video in French here

From Darwin’s example, viewers learn about the challenges the country as a whole faces in its fight against corruption and trying to make its administration more transparent, efficient, and accountable to citizens. The film illustrates how the Madagascar government benefitted from country diagnostics and the feedback of citizens to refine its reform agenda.