Mali, April 10, 14 participants, Organizer: SOS Democratie

A great opportunity for one to self reflect on ground reality. Conducting the evaluation as a focus group of main actors not only allowed us to collect views of all, but most importantly helped confront respective opinions of the administration, central government versus elected, and  local government versus civil society.

Having Malians evaluate Malians’ local governance also helps in the acceptance of the final results as opposed to a foreign expert study’s reports.  Choosing this mode of study will have the advantage of increasing the acceptability of further recommendations and their implementation.

In the Mali experience, the Prime Minister’s willingness to accompany the process and even participate to answer a few questions (as a former mayor) and the critics, and the “raw” truth he brought from his experience, greatly helped the participants willingness to open up.

Many thanks to the Hunger Project and The UN Democracy Fund for conducting such an innovative research involving self evaluation and giving me the opportunity to accompany them.

– Mrs. Traore, Coumba Bah, Active Member of Malian Civil Society, member National Reconciliation Commission,  ICMA, GEMACO, SOS Democratie, Democratie 101