Building effective, transparent, and accountable governance and civil society

Governance

Effective and accountable public sector management and governance is increasingly recognised as essential to broad-based and sustainable socioeconomic development. Well-functioning government institutions at all levels play a critical role in planning and delivering health and education infrastructure, improving access to shelter, and providing basic municipal services to the population. South Africa continues to grapple with the effect of transformation at all levels of government. Elsewhere in Africa, national governments are steadily decentralising resources and responsibilities to regional and local levels.

ECIAfrica provides technical assistance and consulting advice to public officials and local communities in South Africa and the southern African region to strengthen democratic governance. We emphasize skills transfer to promote long-term sustainability. We avoid overly technical solutions and instead rely on equipping public officials, citizens, and civil society organisations with the tools and expertise needed to build accountable, responsive, and effective governments at all levels.

Our range of services includes the following:

■ Public policy development and implementation. On-site scaling-up of implementation lessons for positive policy change at provincial and national levels.
■ Civil society strengthening. Building capacity of associations, and non-governmental and community-based organisations for service provision, financial sustainability, and advocacy.
■ Research, evaluation and analysis. Evaluating development programmes and assessing institutions to provide clients and donors with quality data, information and analysis on governance issues.
■ Aid management. Working with donors to harmonize and coordinate efforts to add value to one another's foreign development assistance.