Making Waves: ECONEWS AFRICA
Stories of Participatory Communication
for Social Change
TITLE: EcoNews Africa
COUNTRY: Regional, Africa
MAIN FOCUS: Information, networking and capacity building
PLACE: Nairobi (Kenya)
BENEFICIARIES: NGOs and CBOs in East Africa
PARTNERS: Association for Progressive Communications(APC), Media Institute of South Africa (MISA), Zero, among others
FUNDING: Humanistic Institute for Cooperation withDeveloping Countries, The Netherlands (HIVOS), Non Government Organisation Network (NGONET), Oxfam, Panos, IDRC, Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA), Both Ends, Netherlands Development Organisation (SNV), UNDP, Action Aid Kenya, Swedish Society for Nature Conservation (SSNC), TOCAIRE, Friedrich Ebert Foundation, among other
MEDIA: Internet, e-mail, newsletters, multimedia
EcoNews Africa enables African CBOs and NGOs to be actively involved in decision-making on sustainable development by promoting timely strategic information flows at all levels.
ECONEWS Mission Statement
Many of the NGOs and CBOs lack formal members. Those with members have only a few active ones, because of the diversity of their interests. The main recurrent problem is the lack of a longer term vision, because many of them organise and are established to address single issues of a short-term nature; for example, digging bore holes in order to resolve a water problem. These organisations therefore tend to be weak. The strongest CBOs and NGOs are those with unity of purpose. Their visions tend to go beyond that of meeting the basic needs to alleviating poverty or enhancing the ability of households to meet their own basic needs.
In spite of the increasing numbers of NGOs and CBOs, their survival rate is limited, as is their impact. Many of them also have limited analytical skills and lack the capacity to organise along systemic issues. Lack of access to information is a major constraint in this process. However, the move towards alliance building is having some impact.
CBOs tend to have more organising constraints than do NGOs. Their grassroot level organising is constrained by low literacy levels coupled with the strong regulation of rural communication channels and stringent legislation that inhibits freedom of association. The privatisation of education is likely to make the situation worse.
The nature of development support being pursued by many NGOs targets the "rich among the poor". The most impoverished are hardly reached because they are lacking in many respects.
In general, the NGOs that EcoNews Africa works with in advocacy are generally resource endowed. As such, the focus is oriented towards partnership building and pooling resources for greater impact.
EcoNews Africa is an NGO initiative that analyses global environment and development issues from an African perspective and reports on local, national and regional activities that contribute to global solutions. It aims to enhance the dissemination of information from affected populations to the relevant policy makers in order to promote the involvement of civil society groups in decision-making on issues relating to sustainable development. ENA is a registered NGO in Kenya, operating at a subregional level and working with NGOs and CBOs in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia and Sudan.
The overall objective of EcoNews is to "promote the involvement and active participation of civil society groups in governance at the subregional and global decision-making levels on policies that impact on national policy, in particular macro-economic and environmental governance".
Two aspects that hinder effective partnerships among NGOs and CBOs are the inequitable access to resources resulting in skewed responsibility sharing and these opportunistic partnerships yield inequitable commitment to meet even jointly defined objectives.
The organisation is involved in the following programmes:
The Multilateral Development Initiatives project is involved in research and documentation of external initiatives (in particular from multilateral and bilateral funding agencies) that undermine people-centred development; and it carries out advocacy, capacity building and networking activities towards this end.
The Community Mobilisation and Combat Desertification programme is involved in building the capacity of affected community groups in East Africa to input into the preparation of the national action programmes to be developed by governments within the UN Convention to Combat Desertification.
The Community Media programme is responsible for advocacy and providing technical support to communities for the establishment of an enabling regulatory environment and the setting up of appropriate and effective communications infrastructure.
The Information and Networking programme promotes the use of Internet Communications for advocacy and governance on issues relating to macro-economic policy and sustainable development; and facilitates prompt and timely access and exchange of critical information among affected community groups and policy-makers at the international level.
The Environmental Learning with Communities and Schools programme seeks to promote the acquisition of scientific and indigenous knowledge through informal learning systems, for better environmental management.
EcoNews is supported by: the HIVOS, NGONET, and many other international organisations. During the period of eighteen months (1997 to 1998) covered by the last available Annual Report, ENA's disbursements totalled slightly over US$90,000; the funds consisted of grants, gifts and subscriptions.
Web services are provided by Web Networks, the Association of Progressive Communication (APC) centre in Toronto, Canada.
The organisation started in March 1992 when NGO representatives wanted to design effective information and communication structures to facilitate the flow of information about development. In June 1996 ENA was incorporated as an international not-for-profit voluntary organisation.
According to ENA's Wagaki Mwangi:
Unless there is an obligation to enforce universal access they will result in an even more serious outflow of resources, knowledge and technology from developing to developed countries. Hitherto government controls that hindered knowledge outflow from communities will collapse. But where there is an awareness in the development world about the value of knowledge, as a commodity for sale through patenting it, there is little of this awareness in developed countries. Disparities between the rich and the poor will increase.
Among the biggest problems are: the regulatory environment and government policy, as well as growing poverty within the community especially with the reduction of the role of governments in providing education threatens the sustainability of whatever they develop.
This is how the "vision" of EcoNews Africa has been worded:
A society in which communities: are at the centre of decision-making on issues that affect them; control their local environment; and have choices and alternatives to enable them to act in their own, others, and future generations best interests.
Collaboration and networking with groups working on similarissues minimises chances of duplication of work,potential competition, squabbles and animosity arising from the scramble for financial resources, and increases goodwill. Still, there is the need to design better strategies, in particular with regard to information and knowledge sharing.
Each of the EcoNews programmes has built its own platform of information in an effort to share knowledge and also expand the influence of innovative proposals. The Multilateral Development Initiatives Programme other than interacting with influential institutions such as the World Trade Organisation (WTO), World Bank, African Development Bank (ADB), Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on macro-economic policies, has also conducted research studies and issues a quarterly publication, Development Watch to analyse multilateral development trends.
The Desertification Programme has assisted groups in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda to work together and form the National NGO Coordinating Committees (NCCDs). In collaboration with the Environmental Liaison Centre International (ELCI), ENA has completed a guide in Kiswahili to assist local communities to understand the provisions of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). It also produces and distributed a local newsletter, Jangwa a publication concerned with the issues of governance within the context of arid land development. Its specificity makes it an effective civil society tool to monitor the UNCCD implementation.
The Community Media Programme has evolved into a separate institution, with its own financing, contributing to the networking of grassroots communication groups and supporting their skills development and organisation. It is a lead member of the Community Media Network of East and Southern Africa (COMNESA) and has focused on advocacy to promote an enabling regulatory environment for community media. It also produces for EcoNews Africa a newsletter, Community Media News
ENA's strategy is to facilitate the empowerment of CBOs and NGOs to undertake effective advocacy on strategic development policies at the national and international levels. To do so, the structural, organisational and cultural constraints are targeted. The programme's scope is research and information dissemination, advocacy, capacity-building and networking. The key activities are: building strategic alliances, strengthening information and communication capacities of the partners and the environment within which they operate, information and experience sharing, as well as research and policy analysis.
"The appropriate communication system is defined by the relevant communities through mobilisation initiatives. We simply offer technical support to adapt these communication technologies, not originally designed with such people in mind, to adapt them for their uses", says Wagaki Mwangi, EcoNews Executive Coordinator.
Methods used:
- Prompt access by NGOs and relevant government officials to information on global processes that affect national policy
- Growing involvement of indigenous NGOs in advocacy for their own benefit
- The recognition of the possibility of the use of the Internet by previously marginalised communities through the establishment of telecentres (promoted by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) and IDRC among others) that is likely to benefit communities around Africa.
Advocacy-type groups are targeted and easily attract the ire of the government. NGOs focusing on infrastructural development and humanitarian work are less vulnerable to government intimidation. However, they require high running costs and a sound financial base. These factors, and the suspicion that exists between NGOs themselves, and between NGOs and donors, make NGO operations a big challenge.
There are few NGOs in the region involved in advocacy work that focuses on the inter-linkages in various sectors. Even fewer are those organisations carrying out these analyses in regard to how the global policies impact on their national policies.
This chapter was written from information provided by Wagaki Mwangi, EcoNews Africa Executive Coordinator and L. Muthoni Wanyeki. A first draft of the case story was produced for the meeting on "Communication for Social Change" held in Cape Town in October 1998. Excerpts of the same case story were printed in "Communication for Social Change: A Position Paper and Conference Report," The Rockefeller Foundation, New York 1999.
The Annual Report 1997 1998 was also consulted during a visit to EcoNews office in Nairobi, as well as other bulletins and publications by the NGO that have been quoted in this chapter.
EcoNews Africa Web site carries additional information on activities, projects and partner organisations.
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