Bonne is Voice2Rep winner

RISING gospel musician Sarah Bonne shrugged off stiff competition from nine other contestants to clinch an investment package into her music career equivalent to US$1 500 and a video recording gig at the Shoko Festival as the winner of the inaugural Voice to Represent (Voice2Rep) competition held on Wednesday, in Harare. By Kennedy Nyavaya. The Voice2Rep is a new annual programme under Magamba Network’s Arts for Change initiative in conjunction with Accountability Lab that supports the extensive amplification of youthful voices as well as participation in national processes through music. In October, 10 finalists were chosen from over 300 entries [...]

2021-03-30T13:47:49+00:0020th November 2020|

Getting students debating solutions to gender-based violence

By Samina Anwary It’s not often we get to explore “out there” solutions to entrenched socio-cultural problems to the extent that it becomes a formal debate with well researched arguments and rebuttals. But this is exactly what happens when young people are given the platform to find creative solutions to seemingly intractable challenges. "The government is required to provide protection and safety under our constitutional framework. Therefore, they are complicit in perpetuating GBV. This is why a class action law-suit is needed." This was the strong statement made by Rhodes University debater Khanyisa Mqotyana during a debate on whether the [...]

2020-10-22T19:12:40+00:0022nd October 2020|

We need to talk about Racial Inequity: Advice for convening difficult conversations

By Cheri-Leigh Erasmus As renewed protests around racial equity continue in the USA, and all over the world, the development sector finds itself taking stock of its own practices and how organizations and practitioners may perpetuate unequal systems through their work. Through an ongoing Learning Exchange made possible by OSF’s Economic Justice Program, a group of team members from Accountability Lab and the ONECampaign have recognized this as an important learning moment that challenges organizations to engage in difficult conversations and, more importantly, take action. Although this work on racial equity was not initially part of the exchange, the moment [...]

2020-10-21T10:28:13+00:0021st October 2020|

Accountability in the time of Covid-19

It’s been a challenging but productive year as the Lab adapts to the effects of working under the new normal of the Covid-19 pandemic, along with the rest of the world. A key part of our work this year was launching a Virtual Accountability Incubator and also supporting our existing accountability entrepreneurs in our network on projects aimed at strengthening Covid-19 response and recovery efforts. Earlier this year we created a fund for our accountapreneurs who pitched ideas for these mini-grants on a competitive basis. We've been excited by the quality of projects that have come out of this initiative. [...]

2020-10-06T08:46:31+00:005th October 2020|

Can social entrepreneurs achieve community immunity against corruption? 

By Michael Seo  In the United States, we tend to think of corruption as the exception rather than the norm. However, in some of the most impoverished settings in frontier markets, the reality is different but so are the market dynamics as social entrepreneurship flourishes. So we ask, how can social entrepreneurs nudge markets toward transparency and integrity in contexts where ethical behaviour, transparency and governance are anomalies? The consequences of corruption are immense and indisputable. Inversely, so are the benefits of trustworthy systems. Research from the IMF, “The Cost of Corruption”, suggests that countries perceived to be less corrupt [...]

2020-10-02T07:47:12+00:001st October 2020|

Growing from failure at the workplace

By Bakhtawar Khalid Fail faire events are designed to celebrate the lessons we learn from the failures we face in different walks of life. For this edition of the series, Accountability Lab Pakistan (ALP) brought together a cross-section of professionals to reflect on the failures they have experienced at the workplace. We share the lessons we derive from these experiences in the hope that it will encourage others to reflect on their own failures and extract meaningful insight on how to grow and improve. All our speakers were mid-career level professionals who are themselves figuring out their journey to success. [...]

2022-11-10T06:46:26+00:0022nd September 2020|

Elevating Local Knowledge for Sustainable Impact

By Sheena Adams and Nyema Richards Walking around Monrovia, Liberia it’s hard to escape Hipco music. From supermarkets and dress shops to small, battered radios attached to motorcycle taxis, the music floats all over the city. The genre combines Liberian Pidgin-English, called kolokwa, with high-BPM dance rhythms and also touches of reggae, hip hop and RnB. Dating back to the Liberian Civil War, it’s also a genre that tackles socio-political issues in the country, and is a means for young people to express themselves in a relatable, viral way. As a campaign tool, Hipco has proven to be a powerful vehicle for change. Arguably [...]

2020-08-14T11:16:39+00:0014th August 2020|

The Value of Translocal Networks

Written by Director for Growth and Operations, Jean Scrimgeour   The Accountability Lab (AL) started to demonstrate how governance can work for people by supporting creative solutions for accountability. Nine years later, the Lab has developed into a network of 9 country teams, 5 additional country partners and almost 110 team members. But AL is not, nor was it ever intended to be, an international non-government organisation (INGO).   Instead, we see ourselves as a translocal network, a collective of local organisations that have a shared purpose and understanding about the challenges we face and what we believe are the creative [...]

2024-03-12T07:40:19+00:0011th August 2020|

Celebrating Student Life and Recognizing Failure as Part of Learning

Admitting failure is often seen as a sign of weakness or of accepting defeat, which is why there is so much social stigma around it. At Accountability Lab, we want to change norms and perceptions around the notion of failure. We do this by providing people with a platform to speak honestly and openly about their failures while also sharing the learnings from their stories and recounting how they were able to overcome these failures.  This enables other participants to recognize their own patterns of dealing with failure, counters the stigma around failure and helps relieve some of the anxiety [...]

2022-11-10T06:46:26+00:0011th August 2020|

How WaterWide is Pushing for Clean Water for All in Nigeria

With the support of the Lab’s incubator program, Wilson Atumeyi’s WaterWide NPO is working hard to hold government authorities accountable for ensuring that even the most marginalized communities have safe drinking water. By Kibo Ngowi Growing up in Plateau State, Wilson Atumeyi learned from a young age that access to clean water was a pipe dream for many Nigerians. While he was in secondary school he and his classmates would often be sent to fetch water miles away from wells that had been sunk by farmers for the purpose of watering crops. One child would have to physically go down [...]

2020-07-31T11:40:08+00:0029th July 2020|
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