By Mike Sidwell

The ECOSOCC was created in March 2005 as an advisory organ made up of different socio-professional classes of member states of the Union. ECOSOCC’s vision is to bring African civil society into the decision making process of the African Union. Specifically, the council aims to encourage African integration and permanent dialogue between all different groups of African people, support the permanent system and programme of peace, security and stability in Africa, as well as promote and defend a culture of good governance, democratic principles and institutions, human rights and social justice.

ECOSOCC’s membership includes 150 national and regional civil society organisations such as women’s groups, associations of aged and disabled persons, all which participate at the General Assembly, the ECOSOCCs highest decision and policy-making body.

A lawyer by training, Muna has been a member of the AU’s high audit panel since 2007. He is also President of the Pan African Lawyers Union and former president of the Cameroon Bar Association. He is the founder and former president of TI Cameroon.

By Georg Neumann

PC’s involvement from the start of the process has already had a great impact. The chapter has enabled the input of citizens into the bidding process, which represents the first case of citizen participation in the decision-making of a municipal administration in the country.

The municipality and PC have signed a “Transparency Agreement,” with the latter undertaking to submit recommendations on how to organise the public procurement for local rubbish collection in the most efficient and transparent way, and to monitor the whole process.

One of the recommendations made by PC was the involvement of a public audience in order to discuss and agree the terms of reference, during which citizens would have the opportunity to submit observations, questions etc. The audience was held in May and around 200 citizens attended. Not only was public participation in the audience very constructive, but the municipality addressed all the suggestions and remarks presented by the citizens, and incorporated several of them into the terms of reference.

The remarks made by the citizens reflect their concerns on several aspects of the contracting of the service, for instance the budget allocated to the service and the length of the contract. These concerns led to the terms of reference being significantly modified to include such details as drain cleaning as part of the service, providing more wastepaper bins in public spaces (including their maintenance and emptying) and specifications on how the service would be provided to areas which can become impassable with heavy rain.

Both PC and the municipality issued reports on the public audience. They can be viewed in Spanish here (report by Poder Ciudadano) and here (website of the municipality).

The agreement is part of PC’s programme “Transparency in Public Procurement,” which seeks to bring transparency into the commercial relations of the public and private sectors. Some of these tools have already been implemented in other municipalities and at the national level, for example in the acquisition of school books by the Ministry of Education.

By Mike Sidwell

Every year 25 percent of Africa’s GDP is lost to corruption, amounting to US $148 billion (US €110 billion), according to World Bank estimates. Total global official aid flows in 2007 amounted to US $104 billion (€72 billion).

Seeing the fight against corruption as a pre-condition to achieving greater aid effectiveness and reaching the goals of the Paris Declaration, TI advocates for improving access to and the disclosure of public information; cleaning up public procurement and sanctioning violators; strengthening institutions of oversight and engaging civil society; and harmonising donor activity to prevent abuse.

“The persistent levels of poverty and corruption across the globe amount to an ongoing humanitarian catastrophe,” said Cobus de Swardt, Managing Director of TI. “We need to see greater local ownership of aid programmes, a clear voice for civil society in the process and an end to purely donor-driven aid policies.”

Although few concrete, time-bound commitments on fighting corruption came out of the forum, civil society and donor initiatives on greater aid transparency gave cause for hope.

"The big step forward at the Accra Forum was the focus on transparency both in the run-up and during conference deliberations," said Craig Fagan, a Senior Policy Coordinator for TI. "Unfortunately, though, this did not translate into the firm, specific and time-bound commitments on accountability, transparency and fighting corruption, needed to make aid more effective."

More detail on TI’s recommendations to the Accra High-Level Forum is available in a one-page concept note on aid effectiveness and in an online special on TI’s website here.