Africa4All project

Acronym of the case:

Africa4All

Web address of the case:

http://www.africa4all-project.eu/

Country of the case:

Africa

City/region:

Tanzania, Uganda, Lesotho, Kenya, Namibia

Posting Date:

23 February 2010

Last Edited Date:

08 March 2010

Author:

Vasilis Koulolias (Gov2U)

einclusion | eParticipation | eParliament

Type of initiative

Project or service

Case Abstract

The Africa4All objective is to create a new relationship between MPs and citizens from Tanzania, Kenya, Namibia, Uganda and Lesotho, by providing those African countries with an innovative open-source software solution, methodology and training in order to help their Parliaments improve the quality, transparency and efficiency of their work and provide a mechanism for interaction with citizens. Simultaneously, the citizens will be provided with a means to familiarize and be involved in the everyday functioning of democratic decision making processes.

The goal that the project aims at achieving is to educate and to strengthen the capacity and knowledge of MPs from African countries in developing and using:

ICT Inter-parliamentary tools for their daily work;
ICT Intra-parliamentary tools for sharing ideas and exchange experiences with their peers from other parliaments;
ICT tools to interact with the citizens and to gather their input on legislative issues.

The target audience includes:

MPs and IT staff from Parliaments;
Citizens and other stakeholders, such as networks, regional bodies;
NGOs;
Businesses;Â
International organizations;
Media.

The open-source online platform's contributions are, at a glance:

To improve the quality of services provided to citizens;
To facilitate the work of MPs;
To accelerate the transition to a knowledge society;
To increase the awareness of the Parliament activities among its citizens;

Partners of this project are: Kenya National Assembly, Parliament of Lesotho National Assembly, Parliament of Namibia, Parliament of Tanzania, Parliament of Uganda and the Project Coordinator Gov2U.

Africa4all (FED 2009/216 126) is a project co funded under the 9th European Development Fund by ACP Group and EUROPAID.

Description of the case

Domain

eGovernment

Topic

Inclusive eGovernment

Sector

Communication (infrastructure) | Crime, Justice and Law | Education, Science and Research | Local/Regional Community Development

Date

September 2009 to September 2011

Target Users

Administrative | Citizen | Civil society

Target Users Description

The groups/entities that will be directly and positively affected by the project are - but not limited to - the following:

MPs and Parliamentary ICT staff from Parliaments of Kenya, Namibia, Tanzania, Uganda and Lesotho;
Citizens, NGOs, businesses and other entities from Kenya, Namibia, Tanzania;
Uganda and Lesotho as potential users of the application or participants in the awareness raising events and training;
International organizations that work in Africa and media from Kenya, Namibia, Tanzania, Uganda and Lesotho as potential contributors in the dissemination of the results and the identification of synergies for the second phase of the implementation;
Other Parliaments in East Southern Africa as potential users of the applications in a second phase.

Scope

International

Status

Pilot

Language(s)

English

Policy Context and Legal Framework

Project Size and Implementation

Type of initiative

IT infrastructures and products

Overall Implementation approach

Partnerships between administration and/or private sector and/or non-profit sector

Technology choice

Open source software

Funding source

Public funding EU | Private sector

Project size

Implementation: €300-499,000

Yearly cost:

€49-299,000

Technology solution

An open source eParticiaption platform available for both desktop applications and mobile phones will be used.

Impact, innovation and results

Impact

The main benefits introduced by this action would be:

To introduce and test an innovative eParliament framework leveraging Web 2.0 technologies as a pilot in Kenya, Namibia, Tanzania, Uganda and Lesotho;
To educate MPs, Parliamentary ICT staff and citizens to leverage technology to support collaboration and active engagement in decision making processes in the society;
To identify the challenges and barriers from the introduction of ICT in everyday functioning of Parliaments;
To leverage project results, experiences and lessons learnt from the five trials to promote wider ICT adoption in ACP State Parliaments, but with a particular focus during the project duration on engagement with other East African and Southern African countries;Â
To contribute to the bridging of the digital divide, enhancing the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) as key enablers for poverty reduction.

Lessons learnt

The project is in progress therefore no concrete lessons learnt can be cited; so far the direct cooperation with the Parliaments participating in the project has proven to be a key factor.

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Showing 2 comments

Morten Meyerhoff Nielsen

Interesting initiative but...

24 February 2010 | 3034 Visits | Rating: 4 (maximum:5)

Africa4All: Interesting initiative and you may find the following of pep-net entries interesting:

Personally all in favour of increased transparency and more and better links between decision-makers/politicians and the citizens/voters no matter where in the world. That said, in an African context direct access to politicians, technology and digital literacy is unfortunately still the priviledge of the few - even in relatively (for the region) wealthty countries like Kenya and Namibia - as Julia Glidden also points out in her blog entry on eParticipation in Lesotho. In factÂ rural remoteness and exclusion is substantial and also relevant factors in Kenya, Tanzania and Namibia.

On the other hand two interesting countries to encourage to participate in the Africa4All project would be South Africa and Botswana - and for several reasons for this eg:

Will achieve a blance between East and Southern African project partners
Both countries have relative good internet coverage
Both countries are democratic with regular free-and-fair elections.Â The South African President has also created a hotline for complaints and input (albeit with some faults, favouring telephones and still to prove its usefulness to citizens)
GDP per capita (even in light of large discreprency in wealth distribution) are among the highest in the region and will provide a different ancle to the project
South Africa also battle with youth participation in election and public debate.

Vasilis Koulolias

community of observing countries

02 March 2010 | 0 Visit | Rating: No votes

Thank you very much for your suggestions.

Our vision is to provide a eParticipation solution that could easily meet the needs of every single African Country.

We have therefore initiated a community of observing countries and Botswana is one of those that have expressed their interst to join.

For more information please refer to the project's website

practice Africa4All project