2023 Award "Best Practice in Citizen Participation"

17th Edition

Phase 6 of 7

Publication Preparation 18/09/2023 - 06/11/2023

Process phases

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Yoff: Integrated Communication System to encourage citizen involvement and participation

Official proposal

07/06/2023 09:47

In local language “ Sax ci Disso ak Askan wi ngir suxali Yoff bi niou bokk “

The municipality of Yoff, the largest of the 19 district municipalities of Dakar (Senegal) is one of the most important traditional fishing ports in Senegal.

The reform known as Act III of Decentralization voted in 2013 made Yoff a full-service municipality. The Municipality of Yoff wishes to put its new mandate under the seal of citizen participation in public management. The major challenge is to put the citizens of the municipality of Yoff at the heart of municipal action, by having a management centered on their needs and concerns in order to strengthen the links between citizens and the municipal institution. Today, the local governance apparatus coexists harmoniously with the traditional customary governance system which has always led the village community since pre-colonial times through traditional governance bodies which constitute the secular branches of the "Lebou government". .

This experience submitted by the commune derives its coherence from the fact that it creates a continuous process of information gathering that follows the path of budget preparation, from public hearings to gather priorities to effective implementation and participatory and inclusive assessment of the community budget. The experience relies on innovation and the contribution of ICT to bring added value to the management of the local authority.

It aims to:

- Promote participatory development

- Involve the populations in the management of the city, from an integrated communication system combining public hearings and new information and communication technologies;

- Strengthen social dialogue between the town hall and the populations

The experience is innovative in that it is an integrated communication system combining the use of information and communication technologies with the public hearings used by the mayor to enable the population to be more aware of the management of their community and become more involved in its management. The experiment combines several proven citizen participation and accountability tools to further involve citizens.

This system also makes it possible to establish a permanent system of accountability and thus create ownership and collegial management of the community, headed by the mayor and municipal councilors as facilitators.

To date, and despite its novelty, this system has been able to garner:

- about ten public hearings which made it possible to have an agreement between the populations and the municipal team for the construction of an improved health post in Nord Foire, basketball courts and a CEDAF;

- A direct face-to-face meeting between the mayor and all the Yoff populations in order to explain the new municipal policy and to collect questions, opinions and suggestions; and we received a lot of very positive feedback on this new way of communicating;

A Telegram application which has made it possible to collect a lot of reactions from followers of social networks and to react to questions requiring a timely response from the municipal team; which made it possible to respond to an old complaint related to the connections to drinking water for the populations of Terme Nord.

www.yoff.org