2023 Award "Best Practice in Citizen Participation"

The Fiscal Accountability through Civic Action Teams - projet de redevabilité fiscale par le biais d'équipes d'action civique - is a project of the Integrity Strengthening Programme in the Democratic Republic of Congo implemented by AccountabilityLabRDC (External link). Launched in February 2022 in the city of Bukavu, it aims to strengthen fiscal accountability and support a culture of community participation for the co-creation of solutions to development problems in the communes of the city of Bukavu. 

As part of this project, a team of volunteers called the "Community Civic Action Team", known and influential within its community, was created. This was done to facilitate collaboration between the local authorities and the population. These teams were trained to regularly collect data on accountability in the three communes, and the results were presented in all communes in the presence of local authorities, civil society actors, religious denominations, people with disabilities, the elderly, youth, etc.

The 20 neighbourhoods of the city have committed themselves to organise regular neighbourhood forums to find solutions to development problems with the whole community. 

After each stakeholder discussion session, the civic action teams went door-to-door to sensitise the population with leaflets and sometimes in universities to reach out to a large number of young people and inform them about integrity, accountability and the fight against corruption.

The media was heavily mobilised, both those who were paid as part of the project and those who were only interested in AccountabilityLabRDC's involvement. It is because of the scale of the initiative in the city that the project was strengthened by other initiatives of the programme such as the production of short films on integrity and sensitisation of the population on development issues, but also the crowning of government officials who were witnessed by the population for their integrity in the performance of their duties despite the various challenges they face.

In the city, the awarded officials are called "icons of integrity" to encourage other officials to follow their example and serve with integrity in the interest of the community. 

For the first time since the independence of the Democratic Republic of Congo, elections were held in the Bukavu’s commune of Kadutu to elect all representatives of the population at the lowest administrative level (avenues). This allowed the population to accompany the development initiatives of their representatives, a path to progress.

• More information (External link)