Citizens’ Access to Information drives accountability: experiences from Kenya, Malawi and Uganda

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AFIC Citizen Access to Info 2016 report

Accountability to citizens in Africa has been a long standing challenge. In traditional societies,people relied upon chiefs and kings for guidance and promotion of common good for everyone in society. People were not expected to ask. It was abnormal for a subject to question the chief on anything. An attempt would in fact be interpreted as insubordination and severe punishment would be administered. The system somehow worked as the basic needs of every member would somehow be met communally. In addition, social cultural considerations rather than economic and political took centre stage. 

During colonial administration, secrecy was employed as a tool to control and govern. Like was the case with kingdoms and chiefdoms, there was no accountability to subjects. Nonetheless, the system somehow worked and enabled social services to be established - although the main goal may have been different from serving ordinary people. 

In many post-colonial administrations immediately after independence, there was a positive mood to improve or at least maintain what had been left by colonial administrators. This changed rapidly with the second generation administrations where corruption and misrule took centre stage in many African countries. There was vast exploitation of natural and other resources although there was nothing to show for it except poverty, conflicts and disease.

Supply oriented reforms led by key donor agencies like the World Bank became common in especially in early 1990s’. Key attention areas were adoption of international and regional treaties like the United Nations Convention against Corruption as well as the African Union Convention on Preventing and Combating Corruption. Other measures included the adoption of anticorruption laws as well as institutional arrangements like Anticorruption Commissions. These too did not address the challenge in part because the institutions lack sufficient independence and capacity to enforce the laws. In addition, because of a culture of secrecy citizens lack the information to demand for accountability and enforcement of laws. Indeed, in 2002 it was estimated that Africa loses over US$ 150 billion per year.

The idea of promoting citizens access to information as a means to promote citizen accountability gained prominence around the world but slowly in Africa. Between the year 2000 and 2010, there were 5 countries with right information laws in Africa as compared to over 80 in the rest of the world. With concerted efforts by organisations such as Africa Freedom of Information Centre (AFIC) the number rapidly increased to 18 in countries in 2016. However, implementation remained a challenge.

With support from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA), AFIC and its members in Kenya, Malawi and Uganda piloted actions to promote accountability through citizens’ access to information. The project involved training of civil society leaders and journalists on the right to information and how it can be applied in health and education sectors. It also covered training of public officials on the implementation of the right to information. Training was followed by a mentorship programme to support requesters to clarify issues and guidance on making information requests where needed. 

Results were encouraging. Several corruption cases were exposed and redress measures taken across the three pilot project countries. Nearly 70% of CSO trainees who had not applied the right to information filed information requests following the training. Whereas training was oriented to health and education sectors, information requests varied from health, education, public procurement and public administration among others. On their part, public officials responded to over 72% of the information requests filed in reasonable time. On the down side, there were few women trained while at the same time issues people were asking about were gender blind. The main lessons were that access to information is a tool which people will apply to address their problems whenever such problems arise. We also learnt that capacity building is a key driver of demand for accountability as well as policy implementation. It was also learnt that while men and women are affected, women would require special targeting for both capacity building and policy advocacy. Details of the case studies is available here in our Library.