Social accountability programme improves service delivery
ActionAid Malawi executive director Pamela Kuwali has said sound coordination in the Partnership for Social Accountability (PSA) Project has improved service delivery in the health and agriculture sectors.
Speaking in Lilongwe on Thursday night during a close out gala, Kuwali said the project’s Phase II has attained most of its targets.
The overall goal of the project, which started in 2019 and is ending on June 30 2023, was to strengthen social accountability and oversight in the health and agriculture sectors.
The project was funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and Co-operation (SDC).
Kuwali said they partnered with the Malawi Health Equity Network (Mhen) which handled health-related targets while the National Smallholder Farmers Association of Malawi (Nasfam) managed agriculture-related targets.
“We also incorporated the media which played a very good whistle-blowing task, alerting other partners on what was happening to take action. And we also had Parliament secretariat and the two committees of health and agriculture,” she said.
In his presentation on the health component, Mhen executive director George Jobe said the project has led to improved service delivery, especially in rural areas.
He added that they conducted a number of budget analyses, made recommendations and shared the reports with the Parliamentary Committee on Health for action.
“Because of this, we have seen an improvement in some key budget lines allocation within the health sector and this has resulted in a huge impact towards the project goals,” he said.
According to Jobe, the project was the first to raise eyebrows on the mismanagement of Covid-19 funds which moved President Lazarus Chakwera to institute an inquiry.
However, he said there are challenges such as high demand for sexual and reproductive health rights compared to the resources provided.
On her part, Nasfam head of policy and communication Rejoice Chikakuda said the project has addressed challenges of inadequate extension service providers, low productivity and fragile farming systems which impacted negatively on farmers.
She indicated that this has been possible by working in collaboration with the Agriculture Committee of Parliament.
Said Chikakuda: “We did monitoring and budget analysis, and shared the reports with the Agriculture Committee which recognised our contribution and factored us in during budget consultations.”
She said the project recommends that going forward, government should recast the Affordable Inputs Programme (AIP) approach and strengthen market linkage systems to favour smallholder farmers.
Representing the media component, Nation Publications Limited (NPL) special projects editor Bright Kumwenda said through community radios, citizen and investigative journalists, the media unearthed and exposed a number of malpractices in the health and agriculture sectors.
He cited the story of AIP officials sexually abusing women and that of expectant women failing to access healthcare due to lack of access roads or poor bridges, both published by NPL, which pushed authorities to take action.
Clerk of Parliament Fiona Kalemba, who was the guest of honour, said the country needs projects such as the PSA which produce tangible results and impact on people’s livelihoods.
