Civil Society hosts a workshop on aid effectiveness

RCSP’s chairperson and the Director of External Finance Unit at MINECOFIN Ronald Nkusi. (photo Jean-Christophe Nsanzimana)

The Rwanda Civil Society Platform has organized a two-day Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) workshop, to be followed by a one-day public policy dialogue.

The workshop, that started yesterday, and dialogue (due August 1) are intended to build the capacity of civil society and raise their awareness in order to be able to join hands with their partners in the struggle to make aid work – especially for the poorest – and also to create a platform for continuous engagement of the civil society with the government and development partners on matters related to aid/development effectiveness.

“Our civil society has not been very vibrant, but this information-sharing and capacity-building workshop will make more aware of our duty, which is to play an advocate role for the poor in the agenda,” said Rwmda Civil Society Platform (RCSP)’s Chairperson Edouard Munyamaliza

According to Innocent Mutabaruka, Action Aid agent in the country, building the capacity in CSOs is the best way to go in order to make sure that the needed impact in the process is effectively realized.

“We want to see our CSOs taking people involved in aid and development programs to account in order to know what’s working and what’s not. It’s the community that we are supposed to serve, that’s why in the whole process we have to stand for ‘only’ the poor’s interests.”

For Ronald Nkusi, the director of external finance unit at MINECOFIN, aid effectiveness must not be a bilateral issue between the government and donors. “It extends to the civil society which takes the issue down to the people. It must be multilateral.”

He added that the civil society has the key power in the whole process, mainly related to what the people in the countryside are benefiting. “We need to see the government held to account from the results on the ground, donors pledging and accounting for their pledges not delivered, and also we want to know what the CSOs do with all the funding they receive.”

The CSOs’ building workshop and dialogue on aid effectiveness is supposed to establish a platform for continuous engagement of the CSOs with GoR and development partners on matters of aid effectiveness.

The workshop and dialogue is participatory; there is an experience sharing with resourceful persons from Better Aid, government (MINECOFIN) and members of Rwanda’s CSOs.

Posted by Jean-Christophe Nsanzimana on Aug 30 2012. Filed under Daily News, National. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.