World Dialogue on Regulation

A great deal of NEPAD's attention has gone into the issue of governance and accountability through the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) process. But there is another dimension to this, which is how to place information about government decision-making in the hands of citizens and to empower citizens to voice their concerns, ask pertinent questions of government and begin to hold governments to account.

The notion of  e-government has become popular in recent times, but as we can see from this Wikipedia definition, e-government has tended to look at how governments can make use of ICTs to provide information and services to citizens and the flow of information is largely government-to-citizen (G2C):

e-Government (from electronic government, also known as e-gov, digital government, online government or in a certain context transformational government) refers to government’s use of information technology to exchange information and services with citizens, businesses, and other arms of government. e-Government may be applied by the legislature, judiciary, or administration, in order to improve internal efficiency, the delivery of public services, or processes of democratic governance. The primary delivery models are Government-to-Citizen or Government-to-Customer (G2C), Government-to-Business (G2B) and Government-to-Government (G2G). The most important anticipated benefits of e-government include improved efficiency, convenience, and better accessibility of public services.

More attention needs to go into how citizens can obtain information independently from government, analyse it and communicate their views to government - a form of citizen-to-government communication (C2G). The means to do this is available and the technology is ready to enable the people to govern, as South Africa's Freedom Charter puts it. It is possible to envisage a form of 'citizen triple play' or even 'citizen quadruple play'. See again the Wikipedia definition:

In telecommunications, the triple play service is a marketing term for the provisioning of the two broadband services, high-speed Internet access and television, and one narrowband service, telephone, over a single broadband connection. [...] Triple play has led to the term "quadruple play" where wireless communications is introduced as another medium to deliver video, Internet access, and voice telephone service.

Here's how quadruple play could work in practice in Africa by combining radio, telecentres, wireless networks and mobile phones. A local community should have access to:

• a citizen-based broadcast information source (a community radio station) through which citizens can receive and deliberate on issues and government decisions affecting their lives;
• a public access centre (telecentre) for information on government policy, information and decisions as well as access to information through internet access;
• a wireless VoIP network as an affordable tool of communication and networking in the community and at national level and which can also be used to participate in deliberative processes such as phone-in debates at the community radio station;
• access to affordable mobile phone networks that can build social networks between city and country to overcome the governance divide between rural and urban citizens.

Citizen quadruple play will enable citizens to access information about government actions, deliberate on policy issues affecting their lives and voice their concerns with government. This would form the basis of a Citizen-to-Government  (C2G) flow of information and communication rather than only a uni-directional Government-to-Citizen (G2C) delivery system. Isn't it time to take C2G more seriously in Africa as a means of promoting transparency and holding governments to account?