Programme Areas

Parliamentary Capacity Building

Capacity Building for African Parliaments

The Institute for Policy Alternatives has established a training and capacity building initiative for African Parliaments in conjunction with civil society. The training has two components:

• Enhancing the awareness of African MPs on issues of social and public accountability for Poverty Reduction, through monitoring and evaluation of programmes and policies.
• Building a cadre of Parliamentary staff, and advocates from civil society to work with MPs in shaping relations with civil society as part of the process of enhancing poverty-focused social and public accountability.

Component #1: Awareness and Skill Building for Parliamentary Oversight Committees.

Members of Parliament, especially those on oversight committees, have an important role to play in linking citizens with policy makers. This link is crucial if poverty reduction strategies are going to positively change citizens’ lives. This course brings together MPs from across the African continent to develop a deeper understanding of poverty reduction and its impact on constituents and communities. The course comprises the following modules:

• Concepts of Social & Public Accountability
• Parliament’s role in Policy formation for Poverty Reduction
• Participatory tools for citizen and community assessment of poverty reduction
• Practical exercises in engaging citizens in monitoring and evaluating poverty reduction
• Techniques for communicating results of poverty monitoring in Parliament.

Component #2: Enhancing Capacity of Parliamentary Staff and Advocates from Civil Society Organizations (CSOs).

These are the core of long term sustainability of any skills provided to Members of Parliament. It is the Parliamentary staff-core who service the committees, by providing research support, and facilitating the deliberations during the business of the Parliamentary committees. At the constituency level, CSOs champion citizen and community perspectives, and facilitate the expression of community voice, both to Parliament and Executive. In this course IPA brings these two groups together to build a cadre that can enhance the interface between civil society and parliament on poverty reduction and citizen well being.

this longer version course comprises detailed modules in:

• Understanding the Policy Framework for Poverty Reduction and Well Being
• Participatory tool for citizen and community assessment of poverty reduction and well being
• Practical exercises in engaging citizens in monitoring and evaluating poverty reduction
• Developing competence in community animation, action-research, and field-based interviews and data collection techniques
• Basic skills in using the Internet for research
• Techniques for communicating results of poverty monitoring in Parliament and to the public

IPA Training Approach

These courses are founded upon the following approaches:

• Engaging Communities & Citizens: A central part of both the Parliamentary Leaders and Parliamentary staff training is the community engagement, to test the tools acquired during the training. This exciting stage allows participants to review what they learned, adapt tools and share their own experiences. Local organizations of civil society, NGOs and other development workers are enlisted to assist MPs, their staff and CSO advocates to engage with communities throughout the process.
• Putting training into Practice: At the end of each training cycle support is provided to develop a pilot initiative in participants’ home countries. The aim is to enable the use of skills acquired, by initiating an M&E activity based on social and public accountability principles, tools and experiences.