African think tanks prove useful in researching, influencing, designing and implementing policies and can therefore be used by development practitioners in project cycles, said Dr Frannie Léautier, Executive Secretary of the African Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF), a Zimbabwe-based organisation that supports 39 think tanks in 25 African countries.
With the main objective of leading African institutions in building sustainable capacity for democratic governance and poverty reduction in Africa, ACBF praise think tanks as a “condition for capacity development” explained Dr Léautier, at a recent lunchtime conference on think tanks held in Brussels.
She highlighted examples from Ghana, where the Institute for Democratic Government (IDEG) recently proved effective in obtaining peaceful outcomes during highly competitive elections, and from Mauritania, where the Centre Mauritanien d’Analyse de Politique, has been influential in creating jobs for young people.
She also praised the Ethiopian Development Research Institute, for providing the background work to put policy in place in order to set up the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange, which allows small scale farmers to plan their expenses and sell their farm products at a better price.
Dr Léautier also mentioned that African think tanks will nonetheless face challenges ahead. "They need to gain access to long term funding to become sustainable, so that they can provide the required quality research and the required thinking to solve policy problems in Africa," she explained. “Appropriate funding can help African think tanks to have the appropriate degree of autonomy on one hand and of influence on the other,” she added.
For EU staff in delegations, think tanks are potentially a key source for policy analysis and for recommendations on the practical implementation of policy.
“The practical research undertaken by think tanks is to guide us (…) in the context of programming and specific project/programme identification and formulation,” said Thomas Huyghebaert, Head of Governance and Civil Society Section at the EU Delegation to Ethiopia.
Evidence based research undertaken by think tanks is also an important tool for political and policy dialogue in partner countries. “[At] the EU Delegation to Ethiopia for instance, evidence based research undertaken by think tanks on the impact of a law and bylaws on Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) is used to address through a triangular policy dialogue with CSOs, the local authorities and donor partners, some of challenges and (unforeseen) consequences,” added Mr Huyghebaert.
Boubacar Macalou, of the Centre d’Etude et de Renforcement des Capacités d’Analyse et de Plaidoyer (CERCAP), a Mali-based think tank and one of the members of the ACBF, has managed to build a partnership with Malian civil society organisations on one hand and the Ministry of Finance on the other, imposing his organisation as a key stakeholder in local conflict resolutions.
It is the result of an initiative from the government of Mali but also receives support from the African Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF), thus being perceived as a genuine partner by Malian civil society organisations.
In a country hit by both an institutional crisis, after a military coup in March 2012, and a war that erupted in Northern Mali almost simultaneously, CERCAP has led local conflict resolution initiatives in areas that were not directly hit by the fighting, but where the void left by the institutional crisis was leading to tensions.
“We have eased tensions between parties within the communities by creating local conflict-resolution mechanisms in places where people did not trust the justice system anymore,” Boubacar Malou explained.
In one case, in the Southern-Malian town of Sikaso, CERCAP has helped create a “Corridor of the Citizens”, a local informal institution where the main leaders of the community are represented and that solves conflicts, he explained in a Skype video interview from Bamako, Mali.
Though local solutions have been implemented by think tanks, Dr Frannie Léautier said the next challenge is to take think tanks “from looking at national issues to a holistical continental or regional perspective so that policy reforms can be best adapted to regional questions.”
This collaborative piece was drafted with input from Dr Frannie Léautier (ACBF), Boubacar Macalou (CERCAP) and Thomas Huyghebaert (EU Delegation to Ethiopia), with support from the capacity4dev.eu Coordination Team.
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