Press Release

24 October 2022

Data for Governance Alliance wraps up pan-African CSOs capacity-building workshop on accessing and using data for advocacy

“Unused data is useless, so let us make data useful,” Professor Winnie Mitullah, Afrobarometer core partner Director for East Africa, urged at the Data for Governance Alliance capacity-building workshop for pan-African Civil Society Organizations (CSO).

The five-day workshop aimed at promoting public data-based advocacy and engagement between pan- African CSOs and the African Union (AU). The AU’s Agenda 2063 and its African Governance Platform (AGP) prioritize a citizen-centered approach to governance. However, the lack of public awareness and access to data on citizen support for the agenda hampers its understanding.

“The Data for Governance Africa convenings aim at creating engagement platforms for collaboration between CSOs and the AGA organs in support of the Agenda 2063. We also seek to strengthen use of Afrobarometer data in Africa’s affairs, in particular in the areas of governance, human rights, and development,” Mitullah said.

In a series of three regional workshops in Ghana, South Africa, and Kenya, dubbed “Stakeholder Engagement on Democracy, Governance, and Human Rights in Africa,” 42 CSO representatives received practical training on accessing and using new data and information tools. They explored public attitude data on Afrobarometer’s online data analysis tool and familiarized themselves with AU’s governance and law protocols on the online AGP repository platform. Other training modules included data analysis, data visualization, effective communications, and building evidence-based advocacy strategies.

The regional stakeholder engagements also served as a platform for pan-African CSOs to meet representatives from various AU entities, interact on their core mandates and explore avenues for collaboration. Representatives from the AU African Peer Review Mechanism, the Economic, Social and Cultural Council, the office of the AU Youth Envoy, the Pan-African Parliament, and the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child attended the workshop.

Speaking at the Southern African edition of the stakeholder engagement, Prof Cheryl Hendricks, Executive Director of the Institute of Justice and Reconciliation, stressed the need for collaboration between the AU organs and African CSOs.

“Africans have been complaining for many years that the AU is removed from the citizens of Africa that it is meant to be serving… This project assists in bridging those divides. In particular, it seeks to brings the AGP agenda closer to the people and for CSOs to be part of its successful implementation,” Hendricks said.

The Data for Governance Alliance is led by Afrobarometer and run together with the Ghana Center forDemocratic Development (CDD-Ghana), the Institute for Development Studies (IDS), the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation (IJR), and Laws Africa, with funding from the European Union (EU).

About the Data for Governance Consortium

The Data for Governance consortium is a four-year (2021-2024) collaboration led by Afrobarometer with the Center for Democratic Development Ghana, the Institute for Development Studies at the University of Nairobi, the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation and Laws Africa at the University of Cape Town.

The consortium is part of the broader African Governance Architecture Support Project that includes several African Union organs and civil society organizations such as the Charter Project Africa. The consortium’s work is funded by the European Union.

About Afrobarometer

Afrobarometer is a pan-African, non-partisan survey research network that provides reliable data on African experiences and evaluations of democracy, governance, and quality of life. Eight survey rounds in up to 39 countries have been completed since 1999. Round 9 surveys (2021/2022) are currently underway. Afrobarometer’s national partners conduct face-to-face interviews in the language of the respondent’s choice with nationally representative samples of 1,200-2,400.

Media inquiries:

Sibusiso Nkomo – Afrobarometer Head of Communications
Email: snkomo@afrobarometer.org
Telephone: +27 73 561 2490

 

Consortium members