In 2020, when Accountability Lab considered working in Zimbabwe, partners, experts, and friends remarked that accountability work required a fresh approach to re-energize the sector after over two decades of solid governance and accountability civil society work. With our partners at Magamba, Kubatana, and others, we heeded this advice and co-created a program bringing together communities, academics, creatives, and development orthodoxy to build an accountability ecosystem. This approach looked at old problems with fresh eyes, fostering unusual partnerships, and novel approaches. 

Our value-driven approach allowed us to support and reinforce existing networks rather than re-form them and to improve rather than discard existing implementation approaches. The Zimbabwe Lab is built on solid foundations, expanding praxis in accountability programming by crowding in creatives, emerging organizations, and young social entrepreneurs. We aimed to expand the space, grow the accountability ecosystem, and ensure that new voices championed new narratives on accountability in new spaces. 

We sat as a team to reflect on four years of experimenting with different ways of working, iterating, and building unlikely networks, and here’s what we found.

1. Accountability is not just a theme, but a value – Our approach holds “accountability” as a value, enabling us to build and engage in accountability across communities, sectors, and issues. These include health, education, climate change, digital governance and innovation, service delivery, human rights, and democratic participation. Having worked with over 80 organizations over the four years, we have seen how treating accountability as a value allows our work and tools to travel, benefitting from innovations across sectors. This approach has also positioned us as an ecosystem builder, engaging with other parts of the accountability ecosystem and adding diversity to our partnerships.
2. Capacity enhancement is an ongoing iterative process – Enhancing the capacity of individuals and capabilities of communities to achieve social change and accountability is a process that builds on our foundational training and events. Working with over 42 accountaprenuers in our Accountability Incubator program has shown us that the real value of our interventions lies in their application. While participants pilot ideas and initiatives during their year-long mentorship and training with us, meaningful outcomes emerge months and years after Accountaprenuers have exited the class. We learned that we must provide ongoing material, technical, and solidarity support. When participants apply lessons learned in their communities, expand the accountability conversation, and crowd others in through what they learned with us, that is where real value exists. To capture it, we must implement an infrastructure that allows participants and alums to continue benefiting from our network, expertise, skills, resources, and credibility. After 2022, participants realized tremendous benefits from technical support, introductions to critical networks and resources, and belonging to an ecosystem of like-minded initiatives they could leverage for support globally. We have already begun experimenting with accelerator grants for rapidly developing initiatives, learning from local experiences and global initiatives like Civic Charge.
3. Building community through an Alumni Network – From the onset, the New Narratives for Accountability in Zimbabwe (NNAZ) project did not promise quick fixes, focussing on longer-term impacts such as shifting norms and values, policies and building a diverse community of accountability actors. As the implementation gathered momentum, 30 young people went through our Voice2Rep, Film Fellowship and Accountability Incubator. It became apparent that while our intentions were good, we lacked a creative framework to keep our alums engaged. In 2022, we decided to institute formal networks for our alums, including Integrity Icon. By keeping alums connected, continuing to invite them to activities, and allowing them to mentor other participants, the network has nurtured productive collaborations across cohorts and years of participation. Courteney Mukoyi piloted his Justice Code WhatsApp in Matobo in collaboration with Descent Dube’s Matobo Youth initiative. Roselily Ushewokunze, Darlington Mafa, and Vimbai Nhengu, three Accountaprenuers from different Incubator cohorts, got together to create the Food Justice Network, and Film Fellows and Voice2Rep artists Rudo Amour and Sox the Poet collaborated to produce “Counting Sheep”. Keeping our participants in the circle enabled intentional collaborations between our creative participants and community frontline associates, leading to “Block 10”, a musical project which featured three V2R artists, Ndonzi Beatz, Wyan and Rudo Amour, focusing on service delivery in Mbare, where we were implementing Civic Action Teams. We learnt the value of intentional investment in an alum network. We will develop this framework further to ensure that it sustains our engagement with participants and consolidates a strong community of changemakers rooted in integrity and shared values.
4. Positive narratives are a more effective tool for movement building– Integrity Icon took longer to operationalize than other activity streams because of doubts about its suitability for the Zimbabwean context. We debated how to present it, set its boundaries, and determined which sectors to include. We launched the inaugural campaign in our second year of implementation and were surprised by the high interest in the citizen-driven campaign stimulated by our ‘naming and faming’ approach. Fifteen (15) Icons later, we have established critical partnerships with the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission (ZACC), ministries of education, social welfare, health, and home affairs, and multiple relationships with fellow CSOs, media groups, and community-based organizations that promoted the growth and reach of the campaign. People want to be involved in positive narrative building and showcase what they like while commenting on what they despise. We hope to continue nurturing a movement based on hope and a positive vision for the future rather than one based on fear and confrontation. Our icons continue to work in their departments and together and are increasingly living up to the billing of integrity icons.
   
5. Pausing, reflecting, and learning – Zimbabwe’s operating environment has always been dynamic and challenging, but nothing prepared us for the increased levels of complexity that COVID-19 added. Given the unprecedented nature of the pandemic, we instituted regular learning and reflection meetings to navigate the environment. These meetings, which included our team, partners, and later participants, allowed us to evaluate the context and reflect on project performance, enhancing our agility. The meetings evolved from virtual to face-to-face retreats every quarter. We embraced the reality that a single learning platform could not adequately capture data and insights from our activities. We added regular Outcomes Harvests and After-Action Reviews to cover significant initiatives and extended our learning community beyond the project to the broader DRG sector through LIKES (Learning Information and Knowledge Exchange Sessions). Initiated in 2023 and held bi-monthly, LIKES have facilitated sector-wide learning and supported our needs for a cross-sectoral approach to accountability work.
6. Centering evidence as a critical component to successful influencing and advocacy at the community level– Evidence-based advocacy is crucial, yet only some initiatives effectively use evidence to drive change. Over four years, with our four core CivActs partners, we implemented a comprehensive data-gathering approach through action research in Chitungwiza, Mbare, Pumula, Glen View, and Goromonzi. This effort, which included VISET, Zvigogodza, NAYO, and Amndla Network, has been essential for objective policy advocacy. CivActs data has driven our work on community issues like water shortages, waste management, natural resource governance, and drug and substance abuse. Built around the five-step cycle, CivActs has led to solutions at the community level on pressing accountability issues. For instance, Mbare community engagements have highlighted challenges around power supply and maintenance of critical infrastructure. Given the recurring nature of the challenge, Amandla’s CFAs facilitated essential dialogue between residents and Zimbabwe Electricity Transmission and Distribution Company (ZETDC) officials. This direct engagement, backed by survey evidence, effectively prompted ZETDC to replace faulty cables and significantly improve power supply for Mbare residents.
7. Building influence and advocacy around solid knowledge and evidence at the policy level – The value of structured research in creating a shared discourse on critical topics and influencing policy was a big takeaway. Our translation of CivActs findings has amplified community issues for policymakers, leveraging the data to produce policy briefs and notes to influence Parliament, the executive branch, and service providers. Through this work, we have also learned that we can improve the quality of discourse by empowering parliamentarians and other policymakers with knowledge about policy reforms informed by community issues, empirical research, and comparative analysis. The value of structured research that can withstand rigorous scrutiny speaks for itself. This work has led to increased requests for capacity building, opinions, and technical support from other entities and institutions. NGOs and CSOs are not always equipped for rigorous and impactful research, so we fostered partnerships with research institutions like Washington State University and the University of Manchester. These relationships strengthened our research capabilities and are critical to our efforts to institutionalize research, policy analysis and mainstreaming a robust learning and knowledge management system.
8. Strategic and well-timed campaigns – We have discovered that our impact is most significant when we create information campaigns that connect with the everyday experiences of ordinary people. In the pre-2023 election period, we provided commentary on electoral accountability in local and international print and broadcast media. We discussed the representation of people with disabilities and the role of observer missions and analyzed battleground constituencies. We supported this discourse on digital channels through ALZ-Spaces on elections, highlighting accountability gaps in election management, the manifestos of political parties, and the implications of the 2023 elections. These experiences underlined the importance of balancing urgent concerns with ongoing initiatives. Moving forward, we will prioritize context monitoring to identify emerging issues and opportunities for targeted campaigns on governance and accountability. We’ll focus on the most pressing governance issues, developing comprehensive strategies and securing resources for sustained campaign implementation.

We believe that our commitment to redefining approaches to accountability work has borne fruit. By structuring research and learning, ensuring a shared experience for all participants, standardizing modules, and developing demand-driven campaigns, we’ve amplified community voices and translated local needs into actionable policy recommendations. Our endeavours have demonstrated the transformative power of grassroots engagement, where community voices drive policy discourse and shape governance priorities. We are committed to building on these lessons, fostering collaborations, and sustaining our engagement with participants to consolidate a vibrant community of changemakers rooted in integrity and shared values. As we navigate the dynamic landscape of accountability work in Zimbabwe and beyond, we remain steadfast in our mission to make governance work for the people through active citizenry, responsive leaders, and accountable institutions.

Accountability Lab Zimbabwe