Will Information Bring Change? An Innovative Model from East Africa

Posted on 28 June 2010

By Ilana Kessler

Twaweza, the NGO where I am interning, is an East Africa-wide experiment in using information access and citizen agency to improve public service delivery. Twaweza has an innovative (and largely untested) theory of change. This blog entry explains the theory of change and raises some concerns around the key question: can access to information really bring about change?

The Theory of Change
Twaweza’s theory of change relies on providing ordinary citizens with information in accessible formats about topics that matter to them, particularly education, health, and access to water. Still in its early stages, Twaweza is focusing its first efforts on getting information to ordinary citizens by signing agreements with five networks that can publicize Twaweza’s content. These five networks – mobile phones, media, religious institutions, the teachers’ union, and fast moving consumer goods – reach virtually every person in East Africa.

Twaweza aims not only to reach everyone, but also to provide information in a manner that is accessible and meaningful. An example of this is Uwezo, the Twaweza partner program where I am working. Uwezo will conduct an annual assessment of basic literacy and numeracy skills in students’ homes, reaching about 250,000 children in districts across Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania this year.

The assessment communicates a key piece of information: primary school enrollments have risen, but many students are not learning. By using a simple, household-based test, the assessment also brings parents into the often opaque world of their children’s education. The overall results have launched national conversations, but many of the most important actions will take place at the village level, as individuals react to their children’s results.

Information and Action
Can information access make a real difference in the quality of public services? Rakesh Rajani, Twaweza’s founder and head, believes so. He intends to use the five networks to establish an ecosystem across East Africa in which citizens can become advocates for themselves. That ecosystem will emerge from an ever-increasing set of feedback loops; ordinary people will receive information through the five networks, will discuss it with each other, will make their opinions heard through radio call in shows, text message reply systems, and more, and will eventually begin to take action.

Daladala TV, a program launched in June by another Twaweza partner, Kilimanjaro Productions, is an example of how Twaweza’s approach will help citizens hear each others’ voices. The show involves sending a local bus (daladala) around Dar es Salaam every morning, outfitted on the inside with a TV studio. On the bus, citizens join in on a talk show about current issues.

Many Tanzanians fear speaking out publicly against the government, so part of the show’s role is to increase citizens’ comfort with public dissent, a key feature of an ecosystem of change. The program is airing daily for six months, featuring the voices of ordinary citizens in prime time.

How will public discussion and dissent lead to action? Rakesh argues that ordinary people are moved to action through comparisons and stories. For example, Daraja, a Twaweza partner organization that works on water issues, may report that in one district 80% of people have access to a functioning water point, while in a neighboring district, only 20% of people do. Citizens in the second district might work through personal connections, such as a successful local business-owner, to pressure the district water engineer to fix their water pumps.

Twaweza would then publicize their story as an example for other citizens of one way they could effect change in their communities. Twaweza hopes that this constant cycle of sharing information and stories will create an ecosystem where citizens successfully advocate on their own behalf.

A Critique of Twaweza’s Approach
The first question this approach raises is the most obvious: will it work? The literature on citizen agency shows mixed results. Some of the more effective experiments have relied on carefully structured citizen pressure, such as using CSOs to create citizen report cards.

Twaweza’s approach, however, depends on people acting on their own or organizing themselves. With a philosophy of avoiding CSOs and NGOs, which are often closely entwined with the power structure, Twaweza intentionally avoids working through pre-existing organizations or helping citizens build formal organizations.

It remains to be seen whether this will work. My hunch is that Twaweza will eventually find that many ordinary people need more active, organized support in order for their actions to have an impact.

A related concern is whether ordinary citizens will know what to advocate for, particularly on complicated issues like education. Having taught in a low-performing school in the U.S., I have seen first hand that even the combination of educational experts, teachers and parents are often unsure how to fix the schools.

If a Ugandan mother learns through the Uwezo assessment that her 11 year old son cannot read, she may want to take action, but how will she know which changes at the school would help her son learn? Although I commend Twaweza for encouraging citizens to act based on knowledge of their own communities, Twaweza may need to offer more concrete suggestions about what actions would be productive.

My last concern is an ethical one. Twaweza’s overall strategy advocates a major cultural shift, from passive acceptance of problems to advocacy and action. Ordinary citizens have adopted this culture of acceptance with good reason; many know people who spoke out against corruption and were arrested on trumped up charges, or whose businesses were closed after they spoke out too loudly.

Should regular citizens act despite their cautious instincts, particularly without a larger organization like Twaweza to defend them from the fallout? Twaweza aims to set events in motion in thousands of villages across the region, but what is its ethical responsibility for the results? Twaweza’s theory of change asks people to take serious personal risks. Although these risks may be necessary for services to improve, Twaweza should continue weigh these ethical questions as it works to build an ecosystem of citizen activism across East Africa.

Twaweza is an exciting and ambitious undertaking. If it can work through the issues raised here, it has the potential to serve as a new model for development, helping ordinary citizens take their rightful place as the drivers of accountability in their own countries.

Ilana Kessler is a Masters in Public Policy candidate at the Harvard Kennedy School and has a 2010 Hauser Summer Fellowship.