2023 Regional face to face on Contested Governance in Sub-Saharan Africa

The regional PGE F2F Sub-Sahara Africa, co-organized by the Africa Division and the PGE section treated the overall topic «Contested Governance in Sub-Sahara Africa – Locally Led Response? New working modalities for SDC in the field of governance and sustaining peace». Colleagues from 14 cooperation offices discussed and exchanged good practices on how to adapt PGE programming to contexts that become increasingly fragile and/or authoritarian. A total of 45 participants, including the head of the Subsahara Africa-Division and the head of the PGE section took part in four days of intense discussions and exchanged about the current challenges but also about windows of opportunities for PGE programming.

The two main objectives of the F2F were

• Creating a reflection space around current challenges and dilemmas linked to contested governance models and their influence on SDC programs.
• Identifying modalities and processes on how to better adapt SDCs programming.

Main conclusions

Context developments: Almost all contexts in which SDC operates have become more fragile or more authoritarian during the last four years. Rashid Abdi, political analyst from Sahan Pathfinders, presented an analysis of the major trends in the Sub-Saharan Africa region on the first day, which gave a good overview of the local (HoA) and sub-regional dynamics. His main message was that Africa needs to evolve its very own brand of democracy, but that it is important not to fall into the trap of relativism, as also this new brand of democracy needs to be based on some basic standards such as inclusivity and checks and balances.

Thematic sessions: Particularly, but not only for West Africa, the session on how to work on sustaining peace and social cohesion sparked quite some interest. The example of Burkina Faso showed, how developmental and peacebuilding approaches can be brought together. The session on PEA led to further interest from a number of colleagues (Burundi, Tanzania and Zimbabwe already launched PEA processes, Chad, Mali and others plan to do so), and confirmed the relevance of the approach. The discussion about corruption led to debates about the approach to be taken (focus on petty-corruption or the big fish) and about the willingness to taking risks (what if anti-corruption mechanisms are targeted at one political group).

Regional days: The regional day of Southern and Eastern Africa was focusing on lessons learned and good practices in social accountability (see report here). At the West Africa regional day, the different experiences with adapting programs to political transitions and military regimes were discussed (see report here).

Memorandum of Nairobi: Each day, the entire group sat together at the end of the day and synthesized everything that had been exchanged during the day, the so-called «end-of-day reflection». These findings were collected and distilled into the so-called «Memorandum of Nairobi» which captures the key discussion points and will guide the work on PGE for the coming 4 years (see memorandum here).