Bottom-up poverty plan for Africa needed

As host of this year’s G8 and G20 meetings, Canada is in a great position to lead the essential process of reinvigorating the global campaign against extreme poverty.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s call for greater accountability in G8 development promises and increased investments in child and maternal health is very welcome.

European leaders and US President Barack Obama, who has called for a new global plan to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, are already on board.

A new plan can avoid the pitfalls of past top-down approaches — if it supports a more bottom-up, citizen-led strategy for sustainable development.

Take Africa, where there have been real improvements over the past decade.

Economic growth has been averaging about 5 per cent a year, 42 million more children are in school, malarial death rates have nearly been halved in a number of countries and over three million people are on life-preserving Aids medications.

We suggest a new citizens’ compact to build on these results.

It would ensure that development is devolved, that citizens are connected with new technologies, that executive powers are diffused, that political parties are strengthened and that the integrity of leaders and governance institutions firmly take centrestage.

There are three urgent considerations for such a strategy:

First, African accountability efforts by civil society and think tanks must be expanded dramatically.

Efforts such as Twaweza, an East African citizen accountability movement, can be scaled up across the continent and deliver great returns on investment by empowering citizens to demand their rights.

Canada’s International Development Research Centre has already partnered with the Gates Foundation and the Hewlett Foundation to invest more in African think tanks, and this can be expanded.

These efforts are easier with today’s technology, especially mobile telephony.

From the student who can text a hotline when her teacher does not turn up to the anti-corruption monitor who pores over statistics from national budgets online, new technology is the tool of the activist.

Also, a new citizens’ strategy should not repeat past mistakes of lionising specific political leaders — this makes it harder for Africans to hold them to account.