Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) in Policy Processes - Maputo, Mozambique

Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) play an important role in influencing policies and practices to make them pro-poor. In the ever changing and complex world of policy advocacy CSOs are increasingly recognising the need to understand policy processes better, use evidence to engage with them more effectively and develop strategies in order to engage with policymakers in a more systematic way so as to make their contributions have sustained impact on development policy.

The Commonwealth Education Fund (CEF) is a collaboration between the UK Government, leading UK development agencies - Action Aid, Oxfam and Save the Children - and the private sector. The uniqueness of CEF lies in the fact that it is aimed not at supplying immediate educational needs (such as new schools and textbooks) but at creating a social and political environment in which education becomes the number one national priority for developing nations. CEF works strategically with civil society organisations in countries likely to miss the education and gender MDGs, in order to make education a sustained domestic priority and to make public schools work effectively for all children. The CEF builds and supports national coalitions and networks so as to enable them to advocate for education policy in support of quality basic education for all.

The workshop was designed for CEF coordinators and partners in Africa who wanted to know more about how to influence policy as well as to develop a draft policy influencing strategy for their respective country programmes. The workshop provided a forum for participants to:

A similar workshop was carried out in Bangladesh for CEF’s Asian partners, by Naved Chowdhury from RAPID.