Our Strategy
AFIC uses several approaches and activities across our strategic priorities, with some activities serving multiple priorities—e.g., our Membership Strengthening work often occurs hand-in-hand with our work under Right to Information or Transparency and Accountability.
Our approaches and activities include:
Advocacy for adoption of ATI laws:
AFIC advocates for the adoption of ATI laws, ratification and domestication of ATI treaties, and reporting to respective treaty bodies. These activities include: campaigning for commitments on ATI in respective Open Government Partnership National Action Plans; engaging national governments directly; supporting campaigns of our members and partners with media campaigns; shadow reporting to treaty bodies; letters of appeal; and other interventions.
CSO capacity building:
AFIC develops tools and delivers training, mentorship, and coaching for its member CSOs and partners across the continent. As part of this, we help CSOs use regional and international mechanisms to advance the right to information, including by helping them obtain observer status at, monitor, and provide reports to treaty bodies.
Public sector capacity strengthening:
AFIC helps public bodies and appropriate private bodies to comply with respective national ATI laws, including by ensuring they understand their legal obligations. We do this through training, mentorship, and development and dissemination of tools and templates for the effective implementation. In particular, we work with selected information commissioners in the Africa Network of Information Commissioners.
Research and knowledge generation:
We are increasing knowledge generation and dissemination to influence public policy. To that end, we produce annual ‘State of Right to Information in Africa’ reports on different themes of our strategic plan; we document case studies; and we facilitate knowledge sharing sessions amongst various stakeholders in Africa and beyond.
Monitoring delivery of contracts and services:
We are expanding monitoring of contracts and services in African countries. This includes development and deployment of relevant technology platforms and dashboards, training and deployment of community monitors, tracking delivery of services, and providing feedback to respective duty bearers. In addition, other stakeholders like media, CSOs, and businesses will be provided with findings and facilitated to use them to increase their contribution in demanding accountability.
Monitoring compliance with treaty obligations:
We are expanding our work of leveraging treaty compliance and providing recommendations for improvements. We do this by conducting studies, producing shadow reports, facilitating CSO consultations and input in respective shadow reports, missions, and engagement of respective bodies and mandates. More importantly, AFIC and its members will popularize recommendations of respective bodies in home countries to increase pressure on governments to implement recommendations.
Building demand:
AFIC builds the capacity of its members, CSOs, and ordinary citizens by providing them with the skills and tools to exercise their right to information, transparency, and accountability. Furthermore, AFIC supports and mobilizes collective support for campaigns to advance ATI, transparency, and accountability.
Co-creation:
Providing recommendations and feedback is not enough. Through constructive engage-ments, AFIC works with its stakeholders to find solutions to emerging problems. We do this through joint fundraising, joint capacity building, technical support, and other activities.