Leader for Municipals Councils in East and Southern Africa have been challenged to use Social Accountability in order to improve public service Delivery for the Development of their Countries. The call was made during a welcome remark by Mr Belay Medhin, the ALGAF Coordinator in Ethiopia who mentioned the term Accountability as an Obligation for power holders to account for responsibility for their Action. Power holders refer to those who hold Political,Financial or other form of Power.

Also Mr, Ramadhani Ahungu from Tanzania stressed a need for transparency and accountability in order to curb widespread tendencies of corruption inherent in most African Countries , which share the similar Political and Economic backgrounds. It was also stressed that in order to improve service Delivery in Africa there is need to improve Institutional Capacities and solution tailored to the realities of the Country, cities, towns or Rural area.

From Ghana, Mr,Emmanuel Kwame insisted on the involvement of Local Authorities, Chief Opinion leaders in the Administration of the NGO’s activities at the invitation of some board members of the NGO,s is the medium of holding them accountable to the society. He shared a practical experience that monthly and quarterly reports of activities with corresponding expenditure submitted by NGO’s to their stakeholders bring up accountability.

Participants in Uganda raised concern on the low level of transparency practiced by most NGO’s where most development assistance is channeled through in excess of the budget from Local Government Budget. Mr,Peter Sigaike the Chief Executive Officer of Mutoko Rural District Council revealed that in most cases Donor funding did not benefit the poor and attributed the missing link being lack of transparency. Mr livingstone from Zimbabwe commented that that at a local level there is an enabling act which guarantee public interest hence enforcing transparency.

The Africa Local Government Action Forum (ALGAF) is a joint initiative of the Municipal Development Programme for Eastern and Southern Africa, The World Bank Institute and the Global Distance Learning Network (GDLN). The program initially consist of twelve modules with duration of four hours. Each module, presented from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. the first Friday of each month, based on keynote presentation supported by a reference reading. The reading is posted in the MDP home page (www.mdpesa.co.zw) as well as in the WBI’s intergovernmental fiscal relations page (www.worldbank.org/decentralization). The Forum includes a core set of 100 participants to be awarded certificates as well as additional 60-80 walk-in participants depending on sessions of interest. Participating sites are Ethiopia, Ghana, Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda and Zimbabwe.

2008 PARTICIPATORY BUDGETING, SOCIAL ACCOUNTABILITY AND SOCIAL INCLUSION