Afrobarometer: Moving from a pioneering project to a registered pan-African institution

Driven by the vision that “African societies thrive when African voices count in public policy and development,” Afrobarometer has approved a new structure designed to strengthen governance, management oversight, strategic adaptability, resource mobilization, and African capacity-building programmes. AB is now formally registered as a non-profit corporation headquartered in Accra. A new AB Board of Directors has been inaugurated – with E. Gyimah-Boadi as board chair and Robert Mattes as a board member. The process of recruiting additional board members and the executive team is also ongoing, with broad objectives of gender balance and availability of critical skills at the board level a priority. E. Gyimah-Boadi has also been appointed to the role of Acting Chief Executive Officer pending the appointment of a new CEO. AB has started rolling out a transitional organizational structure and will work assiduously to have its planned structure in place by June 2020.

Round 7 Pan-Africa Profiles

Afrobarometer launched its Pan-Africa Profiles series of Round 7 cross-country analyses with releases on the most important problems, democracy and migration. The migration release featured a panel discussion, in partnership with the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the European Union (EU), in Nairobi. AB continued its Round 7 Pan-Africa Proles series with releases on public service delivery, closing political space, media freedom, and elections. The release on closing political space featured a panel discussion in Johannesburg in collaboration with CIVICUS, Freedom House, and Mail and Guardian Africa, while the data on media freedom was launched in partnership with CIMA ahead of World Press Freedom Day events in Addis Ababa. Its latest release on corruption, in partnership with Transparency International, will be followed by releases on climate change and other topics.

New data coming soon:

AB’s 20-year journey hit some bumps in Round 7, when funding was uncertain. But everyone stuck together, tightened their belts, worked harder than ever, and instead made Round 7 into one of our best ever, with a successful transition to electronic data capture, better data, more publications and media attention than ever, steps toward making AB a stronger and more sustainable organization for the future.

AB developed exciting new modules, including media misinformation, populism, traditional leaders, taxation, globalism and social cohesion for its Round 8 questionnaire that were unveiled in May in Johannesburg. After a successful pretesting of the Round 8 questionnaire in Ghana, Round 8 surveys have begun with fieldwork in Botswana and Namibia.