The European Union Delegation to the African Union (AU) in Addis Ababa has awarded Laws.Africa and four partner organizations a major four-year grant to strengthen implementation of democracy, governance, and human rights on the African continent.
The project aims at producing original and solid publicly available data and at building information-sharing infrastructure and capacity among various stakeholders, including relevant AU organs that are part of the African Governance Architecture (AGA). It will help promote a collaborative approach to advocacy and monitoring of the AGA agenda by African citizens and civil society networks, and more largely contribute to achieving the African Union’s Agenda 2063.
Laws.Africa’s partners in the project are the Institute for Development Studies at the University of Nairobi, the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation in South Africa, the Center for Democratic Development in Ghana, and Afrobarometer.
Working with official AGA organs, the partners will collect and disseminate public opinion data on human rights and democratic governance at national, regional, and continental levels; create an information clearinghouse; train civil society networks for effective advocacy; facilitate consultation and coalition-building; and conduct innovative campaigns to raise awareness about various AU normative acts and help promote their implementation across Africa.
“This project pools the expertise and experience of five pioneering African organizations, all committed to making it easier to understand, track, and promote our continent’s democratic progress,” Afrobarometer CEO E. Gyimah-Boadi said in announcing the grant. “The ultimate beneficiaries, through improved democratic governance, will be Africa’s citizens.”