Voice. Dialogue. Evidence. Action.
Read Africa’s Voices Annual Report 2019
While it’s never easy to distill the work that Africa’s Voices does in only a few words, voice, dialogue, evidence, and action epitomise our achievements in 2019: with citizen voice as the starting point, we curate and build large-scale dialogues from which we draw powerful evidence on citizen opinions and priorities that help drive decision-makers’ action.
With the global COVID-19 pandemic derailing a lot of our 2020 plans, our annual reflection for 2019 was inevitably delayed. Yet the content of the report is still timely. In it, you will read about our Imaqal project in Somalia, a nationwide multimedia campaign to challenge the negative norms that sustain gender inequality and social exclusion, which engaged over 50,000 people and became the premise upon which our rapid diagnostic to gauche Somalis’ perceptions of risk and preparedness in the early days of COVID-19 was based.
You will also read about how we leveraged the power of media to promote public participation and improve accountability outcomes in Somalia and Kenya – an invaluable process as decision-makers, globally and in the East African region, are introducing measures to curb the pandemic. Since the response to the COVID-19 pandemic is about the preservation of health and lives of people, the voice of citizens must be the driving force.
Finally, the report includes a farewell note from my predecessor and co-founder of Africa’s Voices, Sharath Srinivasan, who shares five lessons for the aid industry from the first five years of Africa’s Voices. Sharath continues to work very closely with AVF as a member of our Technical Advisory Group.
I invite you to go through the report and share with us any feedback or reflections you may have.
With best wishes,
Samuel Kimeu
Executive Director
