In
Tanzania and Kenya the team met with Justice Rutenge and Ali Hassan respectively.
They shared the different ICT platforms and strategies that Twaweza uses to
engage the citizens in social accountability.
First, they shared that Twaweza doesn’t directly relate with the
community but rather uses five established networks; media - radio, TV and
phones, fast moving consumer goods like pens, books and gum boots and already
established institutions dealing with large numbers of people like the teachers
unions and religious institutions.
Explaining
the use of frequent moving consumer goods, Justice and Hassan asserted that
they work with the companies that manufacture these goods to include a
particular message that they want to send out in the goods, although the type
of goods used also depends on who they are targeting at a time.
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| meeting Twaweza Staff in Nairobi in HIVOS offices |
Explaining
their work with the media, they noted that Twaweza signs media framework
agreements demanding that they –media tailor their reporting and programs to
community related news stories, and improving the quality of news by being
people/community centered and not the usual stories the media runs based on
prominent personalities only. Similary, the media is tasked to give media
alerts to Twaweza on any interesting and important community related stories
for further advocacy.
About
the type of information shared, Justice noted that their focus is only in the
three sectors of water, health and education. And that the information
disseminated to the community is usually packaged in an interesting and
challenging way; comparison and stories of change which are largely fictious.
This information is usually intended to annoy, challenge the citizen, give them
discomfort and task them to think of solutions to the problems raised and also
trigger them into action i.e to hold their leaders accountable; this is locally
called “citizen agency”.
Hussein
shared an example of the messages/information shared with the community; “45% of the children in Kenya drop out of
school even after the introduction of free/universal primary education”. Accordingly Twaweza doesn’t offer solutions,
it only provides you with the information that you need to know about your
community and possibilities. “We believe
that the people understand their problems better and as thus the solutions lay
within them” Hussein asserted.
Sharing
about the limited impact of the daraja/huduma platform previously used, Justice
blamed it on the fact that many people do not love texting or even others do
not know how to sms, due to illiteracy. Similarly, the availability of too many
short codes gets to confuse the people and they end up not responding to
anything when asked to, and lastly, the 350sh charged per sms also demoralized
the citizens because it was way too much compared to the usual 45sh charge for
other sms. He believes that if the charge is made a little lower than the usual
sms fee, then citizens could use this platform more often.
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| meeting TWAWEZA staff in Dar es Salaam |
Other
organizations visited were HIVOs and SODNET in Nairobi and Get Real Training in
Dar es Salaam. SODNET shared with RIC-NET some ways in which the huduma
platform can be made more effective and relevant; Kip and Phillip noted that
the first step is building partnerships/public relations with large
institutions that offer public services everyday like national water and Local
governments. This is geared at gaining their trust and making them understand
why huduma and how it can make monitoring the impact of their interventions a
lot easier.
Similarly
Phillip and Kip suggested that an inception meeting of all key service
providers to introduce them to this platform and also create understanding why
they need it and how it works could also pave way for its effectiveness.
Talking
about their experience with huduma, the duo revealed that in the places where
huduma has been understood and embraced, a lot of improvement in assessing the
impact of interventions, evidence based reporting, citizen engagement and provision
of services to the citizens has been registered. Accordingly today signing of
performance contracts for civil servants in Kenya is now based on the use of
huduma; “huduma has proven to be a
planning, early warning and assessment tool”, they asserted.
From
the visit a number of lessons were learnt, these include;
- The use of ICT/on-line platforms is one reliable and effective way of reaching and engaging masses fast and easily because a large percentage of citizens have phones, radios and TV sets, on the other hand they are a good channel of amplifying citizens’ voices.
- An effective bulk sms platform is one that has a feedback mechanism too; because it is through this that one can receive feedback from or get the opinion of the community. This basically guides interventions and also informs one on the impact of his/her implementation.
- Whereas citizens do not send messages because of the fee attached to them, it is not wise to suggest that this fee should be scrapped off so as to have more reporters, because on the other hand the attached fee ushers ownership and attaches value to the platform. Maybe, the fee should be made a little lower than the usual sms rates.
- If the functionality of huduma platform is strengthened and fully embraced, worries of limited citizen engagement, evidence based reports and timely reporting will be erased because huduma provides all that with just a click of the button.
RIC-NET
to hold an inception meeting with key stakeholders/service providers that they
work with to introduce the huduma concept to them and also strengthen
partnerships with them.
Additionally
RIC-NET to consider the printing and sharing of posters about huduma to offer
publicity and also create understanding on the platform amongst the users.
Ø In
future, RIC-NET will exploit the strategy of using frequent/fast moving consumer
goods because, they reach many people.
