Resources

Accountability is a complex issue in South Africa. The country has high levels of inequality, and marginalised groups – as in many countries – struggle to make themselves heard by those in power. Yet the issue is further complicated by an interacting set of factors, including the legacy of apartheid, gender and religious issues, and the lack of access to those in power.
 

Through a six-year research project, the Sustainable Livelihoods Foundation (SLF) used a range of technology-enabled participatory processes to unpack this lack of government accountability. This report focuses on four case studies, which examined the lived realities of marginalised groups and the activists that campaign on their behalf: activists against gender-based violence and for community safety; community care workers and health committee members working for public health; informal traders and the informal economy; and traditional medicine, Rastafarian bossie doktors and indigenous rights.
 

Using a multi-method research process, SLF supported these groups to work together and identify the accountability issues that they felt were important, and then consider how they could raise their voice collectively to those in power and those who shape and implement policy. As well as providing valuable findings, which SLF fed into the policy dialogue, this process also strengthened the capacity of these groups to speak out – not least through the use of different participatory technologies including digital storytelling, filmmaking, PhotoVoice, geospatial mapping and infographics.
 

This report reflects on the different tools used, considering not just the effectiveness of the outputs generated but also how these tools can empower citizens and bring marginalised groups together. Lastly, the report reflects on SLF’s role as an intermediary organisation, and how this role can influence the path that marginalised groups take in their efforts to make government more responsive to their needs.

Following widespread decentralisation reforms, including across Africa, responsibility for sanitation and hygiene (S&H) often sits with sub-national governments.

For some time, local government leadership has been recognised as key to ensuring sustainability and scale and it is an important component of the emerging use of systems strengthening approaches in the S&H sector.

From late 2020 to early 2021, the Sanitation Learning Hub collaborated with local government actors and development partners from three sub-national areas to explore ways of increasing local government leadership and prioritisation of sanitation and hygiene (S&H) to drive progress towards area-wide S&H. It is hoped that this work will provide practical experiences to contribute to this thinking.

Case studies were developed to capture local government and development partners’ experiences supporting sub-national governments increase their leadership and prioritisation of S&H in Siaya County (Kenya, with UNICEF), Nyamagabe District (Rwanda, with WaterAid) and Moyo District (Uganda, with WSSCC), all of which have seen progress in recent years.

The cases were then explored through three online workshops with staff from the local governments, central government ministries and development partners involved to review experiences and identify levers and blockages to change. This document presents key findings from this process.

This is part of the Sanitation Learning Hub's Learning Brief series.

A French translation is also available on the Sanitation Learning Hub website. 

This book is written by 13 Karimojong researchers, young men and women aged between 20 and 29, of the Matheniko, Bokora and Tepeth groups who live in the Karamoja Sub-Region in Uganda.  In November 2011 they set out to research the situation of youth in their area and this book comprises their findings and conclusions.  Some of these researchers have been through school and university, others have not been to school at all, and this combination of people who read and write and those who speak and hear is the strength of this research.  It enabled access to people, knowledge and ideas that would not have been possible otherwise.  The basic principles used are described in a methods paper, Action Research; how a group of young people did it in Napok and Moroto, in Karamoja, Uganda.

This guidebook is part of a research toolkit produced by the International Save the Children Alliance to support the UN Study on Violence against Children (the other part is called So you want to involve children in research? A toolkit supporting children's meaningful and ethical participation in research relating to violence against children). This part of the toolkit is based on the experience of Save the Children developed to facilitate children's meaningful participation in the process leading up to, and including, the 2002 UN General Assembly Special Session for Children. It deals with involving childrean in formal consultation and policy processes and covers the following main areas: organizing consultaions with children; planning preparatory workshops with and for children; having children on delegations; the role of adults in creating an enabling environment for participation; ensuring that children are safe and protected; and ensuring follow-up. It also has an extensive guide to other resources.

This paper is a case study exploring the process of mobilising citizen action around the right to information. It documents a recent experience with a participatory social audit carried out with marginalized villages in Orissa under a less-than-transparent panchayat (local government). A campaign involving participatory action research, popular education, training and alliances among people's organisations, NGOs, sympathetic government officials and the media, led to exposure and prosecution of corrupt panchayat officials.