West Africa

Tuesday 23rd November 2-3.30pm (Nigeria time) 1-2.30pm (UK time)

At AfricaSan6 conference, the Sanitation Learning Hub are facilitating this free online session on how to galvanise and sustain support of local governments for sanitation and hygiene. Register for AfricaSan6

In the session panellists will share concrete examples of local government leadership mainly from West Africa, looking at what leads to prioritisation of sanitation and hygiene, and identifying commonalities and transferable knowledge.

The session builds on the work of the Sanitation Learning Hub (SLH) with government representatives and development partners from local areas in East and West Africa in 2020-2021.

The Participatory Approaches Learning Study (PALS) examined the potential for increasing stakeholder participation in DFID country programmes and at DFID's experience of delivering aid through participatory approaches. Its recommendations include proposals on staff development, on ways to make the Project Cycle Management System more flexible and accountable, and on making participation a stronger characteristic of DFID itself.

For the past three years the Centre for Cosmovision and Indigenous Knowledge (CECIK) has been working in Northern Ghana with an approach based on Empathic Learning and Action (ELA) framework. This framework has been developed and tested to support development projects that allow peoples' religious beliefs and practices to be an active part of the planning process. In this case study, the Boosi tribe from Bongo, Northern Ghana worked with a CECIK representative to design an experiment to keep the invasion of 'devil weed' at bay.

This is a resource book designed primarily for development workers working within the field of the rural poor. It describes a range of first-hand experiences with participatory approaches in the context of projects funded by The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and governments in Asia and the Pacific. The book is divided into a number of sections. Part One examines poverty and participation and explains why the poor should be targeted and in what ways this is possible.

This report reviews the impact of methodological contributions for assessment amongst NGO development initiatives in West Africa. The review is an effort to provide Oxfam UK/I and Novib staff with the advances made in this region. The report discusses the kinds of impact that Oxfam and Novib development projects are trying to achieve as well as relevance to impact assessment in the West African context. Through the use of participatory methods of impact assessment, it examines the evaluation methods of various organisations in West Africa.

This network paper from the Rural Development Forestry Network presents two papers. The first paper ôDesigning participatory strategies for forest projects in West Africa: two case studies from Beninö, examines different approaches to achieving effective participation by local people, by contrasting two successful forestry projects in Benin.

This case study provides an example of a participatory multi-institutional, extension approach to seed development and dissemination.