Rethinking social accountability in Africa: lessons from the Mwananchi Programme

​Despite evident economic progress in Africa, inequality is slowing the rate at which growth delivers better services to poor people. This event launches the report ‘Rethinking social accountability in Africa: lessons from the Mwananchi Programme’. RSVP to infoshopevents@worldbank.org

Based on five years of lessons and case studies from implementing the Mwananchi Programme across six African countries, the report argues there are three major problems with the way social accountability projects are designed and carried out: failure to engage with incentives at the heart of collective action problems; non-evolving theories of change that fail to take advantage of learning by doing; and generic support to text-book agents of change, without identifying the best partner for each context.

The report proposes that in order to transform citizen-state relationships in favour of the poor, we need a through understanding of local dynamics and incentives, in order to build relationships based on trust.

Read stories of change from the Mwananchi Programme.

A light lunch will be served before the presentations begin.