CSPP National Seminar

The second national seminar of ODI's new Civil Society Partnerships Programme's (CSPP) Regional Consultation in Southern Africa was held in Maputo, Mozambique, on the 14th February 2005, in collaboration with the Cruzeiro do Sul - a Mozambican research organisation working on issues around poverty reduction and sustainable development. The seminar provided a forum for representatives from policy research institutes and non-governmental agencies to discuss the opportunities and challenges for CSOs to use evidence to inform policy, learn about the latest worldwide research and practice in this area, share experiences about ongoing activities and identify opportunities for collaborative work.

The presentation to the seminar given by Cruseiro do Sul (powerpoint presentation 160kb) was on issues regarding land reform in Mozambique. This case study described how evidence gathered by CSOs usefully contributed to national policy on land reform in Mozambique with active participation of CSOs.

The main concerns expressed by participants at the seminar were as follows:

The PRSP process is a good example of a process in which CSOs have been actively involved in Mozambique.
There is still a lack of access to the available information. The majority of government bureaucrats still think that the information available at the ministries is not to be shared with the public, and therefore stored away.
There is a lack of communication within the different levels of the Government. This makes the policy process very complicated, time consuming and therefore obstructs CSOs from finding entry points into the policy debate.
There is a need to educate government officials on how to share information with the civil society.
The little information available sometimes does not get to the population outside Maputo City due to the lack of means of communication (newspapers, radio, television, and internet) and illiteracy. There is a need to find an easier way to disseminate information on development issues.
CSO should be proactive rather than reactive to the policy changes and also need to engage with the government rather than being critical.
CSOs need to have long-term strategic objective of influencing policy processes. Because of funding crisis the majority of CSOs give precedence to short term projects over longer term programmes. They are therefore not able to develop capacity to engage with the policy processes over a longer period of time.