Advocacy in Africa

From SOUL BEAT AFRICA - where communication and media are central to AFRICA's social and economic development

In this issue of The Soul Beat:

* ADVOCACY STRATEGIES for agriculture and TB/HIV...
* VIDEO ADVOCACY around health and human rights...
* MANUALS AND TOOLKITS to guide advocacy efforts...

"Advocacy is the strategic use of information to influence the policies and actions of those in positions of power or authority to achieve positive changes in people's lives" (from Tracking Progress in Advocacy: Why and How to Monitor and Evaluate Advocacy Projects and Programmes, see point 4 below).

This edition of The Soul Beat looks at how organisations are using advocacy to bring about social change in the field of HIV/AIDS, reproductive health, maternal health, human rights, and the environment. It features a selection of project experiences, strategic thinking documents, and resources from the Soul Beat Africa website that explore a range of advocacy strategies including video advocacy and electronic advocacy (e-advocacy).

If you would like your organisation's communication work or research and resource documents to be featured on the Soul Beat Africa website and in The Soul Beat newsletters, please contact soulbeat@comminit.com

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SELECT ADVOCACY PROGRAMMATIC AND EVALUATION STRATEGIES

1. Guns and Roses: Advocacy in an Emerging Democracy
By Marian Nell and Janet Shapiro
This book, published by Atlantic Philanthropies in March 2010, is an attempt to distil learning from three books published during 2009 that provide insights into doing advocacy work in South Africa. After looking briefly at the constitutional basis for advocacy work, the authors focus on two campaigns - the Gun Free South Africa (GFSA) campaign to reduce the number of firearms circulating in society and the campaign for the recognition of same-sex marriage conducted around the Civil Union Act by organisations from the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) sector. According to the report, the structures of the campaigns were similar and highlight some of the core challenges that advocacy campaigns in a constitutional democracy such as South Africa face.

2. Advocacy for Ethiopia - Ethiopian
Advocacy for Ethiopia (AFE) is a global coalition formed to advance human rights, rule of law, good governance, and the protection of the environment and sustainable development in Ethiopia. AFE's activities include advocacy, education, information dissemination, and public mobilisation. AFE strives to present information, data, and analysis that fosters a better understanding and awareness of Ethiopia and its peoples’ struggles in order to gain support from international policy makers and the Ethiopian diaspora.

3. Advocating for Agricultural Development - Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Tanzania, Uganda
This project by TrustAfrica was developed to support the implementation of the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP), signed by 53 African governments, which commits states to making agriculture a top priority in national development. TrustAfrica's project aims to strengthen the capacity of agriculture advocacy organisations and networks, as well as develop locally appropriate advocacy strategies that ensure national policies align with the goals of CAADP. TrustAfrica is working with local partners to assess organisational needs and opportunities, provide grants, conduct capacity-building workshops, provide technical assistance, and support peer learning.

4. Tracking Progress in Advocacy: Why and How to Monitor and Evaluate Advocacy Projects and Programmes
By Maureen O’Flynn
This paper, published by International NGO Training and Research Centre (INTRAC) in 2009, introduces the scope of, and rational for, engaging in advocacy work as part of development interventions. It then focuses on the issue of monitoring and evaluating these efforts - offering reasons why and when these processes should be planned and implemented, what’s involved, and who should be engaged in the process. It concludes by looking at some of the particular challenges and opportunities that the monitoring and evaluation of advocacy work presents. It also offers some helpful considerations to those who are designing or implementing these processes.

5. Involving the Community in Responding to TB/HIV: Outcomes of Community-Led Monitoring and Advocacy
This fact sheet, published by the Open Society Institute (OSI) in 2008, outlines the main findings emerging from Public Health Watch, a project of OSI's Public Health Program that aims to strengthen meaningful and sustained engagement of infected and affected communities in the development, implementation, and monitoring of tuberculosis (TB) and HIV policies, programmes, and practices. Public Health Watch believes that engaged, well-informed individuals and community groups are needed to: ensure that government policies live up to the commitments made at the international level; scrutinise whether and how policies and guidance are implemented; and point out where the numbers may not reflect the full reality on the ground.

6. Prospects for e-Advocacy in the Global South
By Ricken Patel and Mary Joyce
This report, produced for the Gates Foundation in 2007, provides an introduction to the methods and applications of e-advocacy and surveys the current applications, constraints, and opportunities in the global south. It focuses on the problem of access, the need to nurture the knowledge and tools necessary to realise the promise of e-advocacy, and outlines a few cutting edge initiatives that could further expand the realm of possibility for information and communication technology (ICT) to drive change in the global south.

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Do you have information to share about using communication for social change? Please send information about your project or your research documents, materials, and events to soulbeat@comminit.com

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VIDEO FOR ADVOCACY

7. Rightful Place: Endorois' Struggle for Justice - Video Advocacy in Kenya
In 2006, Witness, an organisation using video to expose human rights violations, partnered with the Kenyan-based Centre for Minority Rights and Development (CEMIRIDE) to produce a video documenting the legal battle of the Endorois people to return to their indigenous lands around Lake Bogoria in Kenya. The community had been evicted from their land in the 1970s to make way for a nature reserve and the video, called "Rightful Place: Endorois’ Struggle for Justice", formed part of advocacy efforts for restitution.

8. Understanding Film and Video as Tools for Change: Applying Participatory Video and Video Advocacy in South Africa
By Julia Cain
The purpose of this dissertation, published by Stellenbosch University in 2009, was to examine the phenomenon of participatory video and to examine this strategy within the context of a participatory video project initiated as part of the dissertation in the informal settlement area of Kayamandi, South Africa. The overall objective of the study was to consider the potential of participatory video within current-day South Africa towards enabling marginalised groups to represent themselves and use film to advocate around issues they consider important. The author concludes that despite the challenges, the potential of participatory video is ripe for further exploration and utilisation in South Africa for social development.

9. Empty Handed: Responding to the Demand for Contraceptives
Produced by Population Action International, Empty Handed is a short advocacy film, accompanied by an advocacy guide, that tells the story of women's lack of access to reproductive health supplies in sub-Saharan Africa, and its impact on their lives. According to the producers, more than 200 million women around the world lack access to basic contraception. Often, these women must travel far from their communities to reach a health facility, only to return home empty handed due to shortages and stock-outs. When women seeking family planning services are turned away, they are unable to protect themselves from unintended pregnancies and sexually-transmitted infections, including HIV/AIDS.

10. Avec Nous (With Us): Participatory Video for Maternal Mortality - Burkina Faso
Initiated by the White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood – Burkina Faso (WRA-BF) in partnership with InsightShare in 2008, this participatory video project was designed to support an ongoing campaign to reduce maternal mortality in Burkina Faso. Community health workers collaborated with filmmakers to interview other health workers and community members about maternal health issues in an effort to give grassroots solutions for maternal mortality issues in Burkina Faso. The resulting video, Avec Nous (meaning "with us"), is designed to raise discussion and dialogue among communities and policy makers.

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ADVOCACY MANUALS AND TOOLKITS

11. Human Rights and HIV Advocacy Tools
This set of advocacy tools was developed by the AIDS and Human Rights Research Unit, a joint programme of the Centre for Human Rights and the Centre for the Study of AIDS at the University of Pretoria, and the United Nations Development Programme. According to the developers, violations of human rights exacerbate the spread of the pandemic, and the impact of HIV on individuals, communities, and countries is worsened by the inadequate realisation of human rights. The tools are a series of documents created to respond to an identified need for advocacy and information material on human rights-based responses to HIV.

12. Mobiles In-a-Box: Tools and Tactics for Mobile Advocacy
This project of the Tactical Technology Collective is a collection of tools, tactics, how-to guides, and case studies designed to help advocacy and activist organisations use mobile technology in their work.

13. Quick 'n Easy Guide to Online Advocacy
This Tactical Technology Collective guide presents advocates with a collection of online services that can be used for advocacy quickly and with little to no technical support. There are services for publishing photographs and video, for setting up a campaign blog, or for using mobiles to communicate in a group.

14. Visualizing Information for Advocacy: An Introduction to Information Design
By John Emerson
This illustrated guide aims to support advocacy organisations to visualise information. It provides an overview of information design including what it is and how it can be used for social change, basic design principles, tips and advice, and a number of effective examples by advocacy organisations, media companies, and individuals around the world.

15. Advocacy and Lobbying Manual
Published by the Secretariat of the African Decade of Persons with Disabilities, this manual was developed by the Secretariat for use in their advocacy and lobbying workshops focusing on the rights of people with disabilities.

16. Pathfinder: A Practical Guide to Advocacy Evaluation
This guide, published by the Innovation Network in 2009, is intended as an introduction to advocacy evaluation from an evaluator's perspective. It is written to give a sense of what is involved in the process and how this kind of evaluation differs from programme evaluations. The approach is learning-focused advocacy evaluation, which is structured to result in an evaluation design that yields the type of information funders and advocates need to understand their progress.

17. Networking for Policy Change: TB/HIV Advocacy Training Manual
This training manual, published in 2007 by the StopTB Partnership, the World Health Organization (WHO), and Constella Futures, is a resource for facilitators of family planning and reproductive health advocacy issues. The training manual was developed to help representatives of non-governmental organisations and other formal groups of civil society to form and maintain advocacy networks and develop effective TB/HIV advocacy skills. The training manual includes information on networking, communications, and policy environments; exercises on conceptualising, implementing, monitoring, and evaluating advocacy campaigns; and relevant materials for advocates.

18. A Toolkit for Environmental Advocacy in Africa  
By Carl Bruch, Bruce Myers, Sarah King, Roman Czebiniak, Elizabeth Seeger, Zachary Lamb, Scott Schang, and Jane Dwasi
This handbook, published by Southern African Institute for Environmental Assessment (SAIEA), is a key component of the Africa Program’s Advocacy Tools Initiative, which seeks to help citizens and communities protect their environment and health, and influence development decisions that could affect their livelihoods. The handbook describes some of the many tools and approaches that Africans can use to promote public health, defend the natural and human environment, and protect human rights.

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Previous related issues of The Soul Beat include:

The Soul Beat 82 - Advocacy for Social Change

Click here to view all archived editions of The Soul Beat Newsletter.