Learning from citizen participation for accountability in Nampula province

Abstract

The Citizen Engagement Program (CEP) in Mozambique is an empowerment and accountability program aiming to improve the quality of health and education services through supporting citizens to monitor them. The program supports citizens to engage with service providers to address identified problems; it also aims to generate evidence for policy and program improvement at the local and national levels. This case study is structured in three main sections. The first section provides a background to set the context in which organizations such as Facilidade emerged across Mozambique, with reference to the ‘third generation’ of decentralization policies in Sub-Saharan Africa and the growing expectation over nearly two decades of ‘participation’ as a magic bullet to improve service-delivery and governance. As well, this section will give an overview of the methodology, some of the assumptions behind the approach and the challenges and questions that the process raised. The second section presents the findings of the research. These are structured around four themes: practices of participation; citizenship building for accountability; inclusion challenges; and other positive outcomes from the work with citizens. Finally, the third section provides conclusions and spells out questions that remain after this exercise. These questions will be useful for CEP, as well as other social accountability initiatives, to bear in mind when thinking about citizen participation for accountability.