ACTIONAID PITCHES AT PSA: SOCIAL ACCOUNTABILITY INDABA IN ZIM

PSA: SOCIAL ACCOUNTABILITY INDABA OPENS CURTAINS

The Partnership for Social Accountability (PSA) Alliance through the “Strengthening Social Accountability and Oversight in Health and Agriculture in Southern Africa” is conducting a regional annual review and planning workshop in Victoria Falls town of Zambabwe. ActionAid Zambia is part of the annual review and planning workshop that started on the 12th of March with a community visit to enable members of the PSA Alliance to learn from the implementation of the programme in Zimbabwe. The visit showcased what has been achieved so far, as well as the focus on activities in 2024. The community visit involved stakeholder engagements and interactions with the project participants. It included an interface dialogue between the young people/adolescents (beneficiaries and right holders) and government departments and rural district council officials (duty bearers). The community visit also involved a site visit of the youth friendly corner at Sianzyundu Clinic of Binga district in Zimbabwe. The second part of the review and planning workshop involved an intimate conversation exploring how change is happening through an ecosystem of accountability actors, at the district, national and regional levels through consultation, monitoring, and oversight of public funds. Why and How: the learning workshop approach utilised participatory reflection and systems mapping exercises to surface insights on what we are observing about how social accountability mechanisms and actions can be leveraged to strengthen the ability of local systems to achieve and sustain development results shaped by the needs of local actors. In the second phase including this extension phase, part of the project’s learning agenda was to document lessons on “Understanding the complexities of power, power relations and entry points of Influence”. The purpose of the annual review and planning workshop has provided the Partnership for Social Accountability (PSA) Alliance a platform to: • Review performance of the project against set deliverables in the Extension (July 2023 – December 2024) • Review and revise national and regional level advocacy strategies. • Review and revise project operational plans for the remainder of the Extension. • Review and refine sustainability/handover experiences and plans and • Reflect on the project objectives based on the learning from the Binga community visit .