By Abass Jalloh
In an open discussion project, officials from Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs), Civil Society Organizations (CSOs), and the Media have rated the contributions of the Budget Advocacy Network (BAN) to be better in terms of performance this year, considering their focus on increasing budget participation, transparency, accountability, revenue generation for effective service delivery at local and national levels.
The session which took place on Monday November 7 in Freetown, focused on politics, economy, social, technology, legal, and environment in determining how BAN has been contributing towards these areas to make a change in Sierra Leone.
Some of the random issues raised as indicators in depicting BAN's contribution towards them are increased participation in budgetary process, increase in public interest in the Auditor General's work, review of the twin gender policies, improved score on Public Financial Management (PFM) assessment that led to increased budget support, taxpayers sensitization and engagement, establishment of revenue mobilization committee for city councils, special time during examination for children with learning difficulties, introduction of electronic fund transfer, publication of PFM document, and more.
In making their decision to rate the network, the MDAs, CSOs, and media were given the chance to rate the network’s level of contribution by selecting Low which indicates that “BAN contributed to the outcome but may have happened without their work”, Medium which represents “BAN’s work is important to achieving this outcome though there are other actors involved or contributed”, and High which shows that “BAN was the main actor to this outcome, and it may have not happened without their work”.
During the presentation after many deliberations from the various groups, they concluded that most of BAN's contribution towards these outcomes fit in the medium category, followed by the low category, while the high category only scored “increased participation in budgetary process”.
BAN has been doing this annual theory of change experiment through Irish Aid and Christian Aid since 2017, for them to know their strength and weaknesses in the course of their work.
Copyright (09/11/22)
