Introduction to ELBAG
By
Ene Obi
Regional Training & Development Advisor
MS-TCDC, Arusha, Tanzania. (ActionAid Denmark)
Context
 Drawn from experiences of working with communities to
support peoples actions to claim citizenship and rights and
use of participatory methodologies and tools - the PRA and
REFLECT approaches, PVA and STAR etc.
 Economics, a key area of policy making, has largely remained
out of the reach and realm of the poor and excluded people’s
action in their effort to seek justice
 To firmly establish people centred rights based governance at
the local level, there is a strong need to politicize economic
decision making process and place it squarely within the
domain of people’s agencies and public action. The need to
hold government and its institutions accountable.
 Understanding that bottom up processes lead to
democratisation of local, national and international level
public policy making processes.
What ELBAG is!!
 Economic Literacy and Budget Accountability for Governance,
ELBAG is a process and methodological framework that
combines
 organising people, developing grassroots
 monitoring mechanisms, democratising knowledge (particularly
political economy and economics)
 and using participatory tools and methods for building public
accountability and transparency, to initiate people centred
advocacy processes
 it creates space where people can discuss economics and use it as
an entry point to build inclusive, democratic and just governance
 It is about understanding how economic processes operate,
asking questions about political economy and about taking action
Objectives
 It seeks to address the disconnection between local, national and
international level
 Facilitate empowerment of people, ensure participation of poor and
marginalized people
 Support the realisation of the rights of people and help in
encouraging democratisation of national level policy making
processes
 It facilitate serious mobilisation of the people to hold their
government to account
 Reduce corruption, increase accountability in the processes of
governance and policy making, particularly with regards to budget
formulation, economic planning and government decision making
that impact their lives
Case studies from Nigeria
Budget tool, as it reflects public policy and priorities:
 Engaging the Abia Parliament: Capacity building of
the Parliament resulted into the Bureau of Budget the
state now have
 BELBAG – Shadow Budget and engaged the Govt using
the media – immediate responses. It encourage serious
networking of CSOs within the state to monitor the
spending of their govt, and many are asking questions
and demanding answers (and getting responses)
 Media as a critical partner in the process – Journalist
Against Poverty
Reflections & Lessons
 Facilitated the empowerment of the people through series of
mobilisation, sensitization and capacity building
 It’s earlier focus was more on the demand side engineering a lot of
capacity for CSOs with engaging the supply side on debates
 Capacity gap on the supply side
 Critical engaging govt. through advocacy facilitates faster process in
meeting demands
 Increase capacity building for the media, made media a partner
 Critical engagement with other stakeholders/peer review
 Continuous research on issues are very critical
Challenges and Opportunities
 Transparency and accountability (corruption now embedded in
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every facet of the many countries)
Political will and capacity gap on both sides/Poverty level still dropping
Lack of true democracy in many countries/representation
Lack of passage of Freedom of Information Bill/and where passed,
implementation is an issue
Project timeline/continuity
Opportunities
 New democracies in some of the countries
 Encouragement/feedback of participants from the impact their
work
 Willingness of AAI to continue to support the process
 More CSOs and groups interest success
 Political will (with some government)