Taking social accountability to Northern Province
After piloting the social accountability project in Muchinga Province, ZGF decided to move to the Northern Province to replicate the same concept. Of course, without adopting the “one size fits all concept” but would obviously take useful lessons from Muchinga work. The social accountability project introduced tools and mechanisms that allowed Community Based Organisations (CBOs) and community radio stations to hold public officials and government accountable. Through the project, CBOs were made to understand that they had the right to engage the government about how resources were spent with the aim of improving service delivery in their communities.
In Muchinga, nine organisations were selected for the pilot project. These organisations included, Friends for the Needy and St John Home Based Care working on resolving challenges around access to water; Mpika and Isoka FM Radio Stations sharing more about the Constituency Development Fund (CDF) guidelines; and God Visits Orphans Home Based Care focused on raising awareness on issues around child labour and the free education. Maluba Home Based Care worked on improving the implementation of the free primary education policy, Chilanga Area Women Association has been working on issues around food security, while Chozi Youth Alive Movement has been focusing on secondary school infrastructure. Finally, Mpika NZP+ has been lobbying for better health services for people living with HIV and AIDS as they constantly struggle to access antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) and other support services.
Having worked with the nine organisations since 2013, ZGF moved to the Northern Province with the lessons learnt which marked the beginning of a new journey. In Northern Province, ZGF first met Kasama Christian Community Care (KCCC) an organisation selected to act as a hub in the province. As a hub, KCCC would help with mentoring the CBOs so as to develop their capacities to carry out social accountability initiatives and develop them as stronger organisations. ZGF then convened meetings in Kasama and Mpulungu where they interacted with CBOs and shared information on how we could work with the organisations in promoting social accountability. In Kasama, 31 organisations turned up for the meeting and in Mpulungu 13 organisations were present. The various organisations were able to present the different scope of the work that they were doing in their communities. This gave the ZGF team a great opportunity to learn more about the organisations, identify gaps in their work and possible ways of collaborating. ZGF took time to explain the concept of social accountability and service delivery, showing how the concept could enable civic participation, government accountability and effective service delivery. Through our interactions with the CBOs, it became clear that the Muchinga intervention was relevant for Northern Province as well.
Just like in Muchinga, it was noted that the organisations in the Northern Province lacked collaborative partnership with other CBOs and government structures. They were doing their work in isolation yet some of the organisations focused on the same thematic area. At the end, ZGF was left with a huge task of helping the organisations with articulating different policy issues and engaging duty bearers in their work. This is something which cannot be done overnight but so far, ten organisations have been selected to be trained under the ZGF social accountability project.
By Tarisai Jangara
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