Seminar Description

Good Governance Africa (GGA) is a registered, independent NPO dedicated to improving governance across the African continent. GGA started researching government performance and citizen satisfaction in 2015. The organisation commenced at the national level in South Africa, yet the results were so alarming that they zoomed into local level municipal government.

Determined to make a difference, GGA chose to work in the worst-rated performing municipality, which coincidentally was the birthplace both of Oliver Tambo, Nelson Mandela's predecessor and Winnie, Mandela's former wife. Through conducting a governance survey of 1000 citizens along a 34km transect from deep rural to urban residents they were able to capture a snapshot of their lived reality.

Next GGA set about building a dialogical bridge between local government authorities and community leaders. The organisation initially faced pushback from the municipality but after some time they displayed their commitment to positive change and signed off on a MoU to construct a public participation forum.

In addition to this, GGA is looking at child development, and youth and marginalised people's empowerment strategies to have a transformative effect on young people's and ordinary citizens' lives. Change has been witnessed not only in government attitude and performance, for the better, but with this an airing of grievances, and a related shift to promote peace and sustainable development in the area.

The seminar will present the highs and lows of GGA's grassroots work to date, followed by an interactive discussion with comments.  All are welcome to attend.

About the speaker

Dr. Alain Tschudin is the Executive Director of Good Governance Africa (GGA). He holds a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in Applied and Professional Ethics from the University of Cambridge and is a Professor in the WITS School of Governance. Dr. Tschudin is also a Visiting Fellow at the CCDP. 

Photo by Photo by Tim Johnson on Unsplash.