Some lessons from working with some of the best current Pan African campaigns

1. Reflecting on a decade of joint policy
advocacy with multi-agency
coalitions: some breakdown and
breakthroughs
By Irũngũ Houghton
Oxfam Pan Africa Director

2. Major changes First phase: 2003-2005
2003 – 2012 • Advocacy on Africa: G8 & WTO Summitry, Make
Trade Fair joint advocacy, joint statements, papers,
A Decade broken down
mini-grants, MPs and CSOs, SEATINI
NBI=NBI/ADD/DAK Second phase: 2005-2009
• Advocacy on and in Africa: G8, UN & AU
Single=multi- Summitry, drop debt, increase dev finance and
affiliate Women’s Protocol, joint advocacy, joint statements,
papers, mini-grants, online media petitions,
women’s orgs and national CSO coalitions,
1=15 people formation of GCAP and SOAWR
Third phase: 2010-2012
100k = 2.2m GBP • Advocacy in and less on Africa: AU Summitry,
ratification and implementation of AU standards,
multi-country programming, large third party funding
2,000 contacts on women’s protocol, joint advocacy, joint
statements, papers, large grants, www.soawr.org,
www.sotu-africa.org, FB presence, direct self re-
Internal and presentation
external
recognition

3. • Combining digital/social media with mass media has
most power
• Co-constructing the campaign purpose and ways of
working around what matters to partners prior to
Learning from Breakdowns
fundraising externally
• Be willing to walk away when you have exhausted all
avenues to build capacity with partners
• Be willing to hold back the Oxfam machine when it
does not work for the partners we are supporting

4. • Knowledge (context, contacts) critical but insufficient
without imagination and leadership
• Building public awareness through digital campaigning
without policy or practice change objectives is
Learning from Breakthroughs
escapism
• Where absent, norms building important but real
challenge is changing behaviour of states
• Constructing multi-country campaigns around multi-
layered objectives within a broad campaign purpose
enables agency at all levels

5. Leadership insights

6. Lessons from a decade of campaigning & advocacy
Our campaigns will have power, impact and sustainability if they;
Campaigning insights
1. Enable citizens voice and agency: (we can transform this!)
2. Deploy tools, tactics and spaces that create mass constituency
and impact
3. Shift power, resources and investment and priorities of states
and multi-lateral institutions
4. Situate the state as primary duty-bearer for guaranteeing rights
and freedoms
5. Seek to interrupt the almost predictable future of misery, neglect
and inaction by states, public, you and me
6. Remain agile and exercise a constant capability to reinvent
itself as the context shifts

7. Scenes from campaigning over the years