The political landscape in the West Africa region has witnessed significant changes over the last three decades. Several countries in the region transitioned from autocratic military regimes to elected civilian governments in the early 1990s. Unfortunately, the gains made in the gradual political liberalisation and electoral democracy seem to be dissipating as the region has witnessed four successful coups and two failed ones from 2019 to February 2022 only. These drawbacks in the democratic consolidation of the region have largely been attributed to challenges to good governance and development including poverty, non-fulfilment of campaign promises, poor public service delivery, inequitable distribution of public resources, high level of corruption, insecurity, and mismanagement of natural resources and its associated environmental problems.
A vibrant, professional and critical media can contribute to rebuilding and consolidating the nascent democracies in the region by expanding civic participation in governance processes, holding duty bearers accountable, and countering extremist narratives. Our strategic objective for the Media and Good Governance programme over the next three years (2022-2024) is, thus, to strengthen the capacity of the media to enable them effectively contribute to participatory, responsive, transparent and accountable governance.
The strategic interventions under this programme will focus on:
- Access to information and civic participation in governance
- Media sustainability and professionalism
- Investigative reporting
- Next Generation Investigative Journalism Fellowship
- Mis/disinformation
- Citizens-authorities engagement
The programme also involves in-house journalism initiatives that are aimed at improving lives, promoting good governance, and countering mis/disinformation. These initiatives are:
The Fourth Estate (a non-profit investigative journalism project)
Fact-check Ghana (a fact-checking project)
You may read more about What We Do or our Overall Strategy.