The Action for Empowerment and Accountability (A4EA) international research programme completed in 2022. It explored how social and political action can contribute to empowerment and accountability in settings affected by fragility, conflict, and violence, with a particular focus on Mozambique, Myanmar, Nigeria and Pakistan, and Egypt in its first phase.

Summary report: Against the Odds

Our final report, Against the Odds: Action for Empowerment and Accountability in Challenging Contexts, offers new insights into how people experience governance relationships, mobilise to make claims of authorities, and strategise to demand greater accountability against a backdrop of fragile citizen-state relations.

• Read the news-story which summarises findings across five thematic areas and implications for donors, governments and civil society organisations
• Download the report

Special issue: Citizen Action for Accountability in Challenging Contexts

A special issue of Development Policy Review, published in March 2023, shares findings from the A4EA research. Nine articles cover the themes of: citizen action, what makes difficult settings difficult, women’s political agency, accountability, citizen experience of governance, civic space, international aid programme experience of accountability, and the A4EA experience of researching in difficult contexts.

• Read the news-story which summarises the issue.
• Read/download the open access articles on Development Policy Review.

Two research phases for the Action for Empowerment and Accountability (A4EA) research programme

The A4EA programme was structured in two research phases, with the second phase building on key themes and findings from phase 1.

• Research Phase 2 (April 2019 – December 2021): Building on findings from the first phase, Phase 2 consisted of five workstreams:
  1. 1. Gendered Contentions 
     2. Governance at the Margins
     3. Demanding Power
     4. Unpacking Donor Action 
     5. Navigating Civic Space in a Time of Covid-19

With the emergence of the pandemic in 2021, A4EA pivoted some of its research to explore the implications of Covid-19 for accountability and claims making – particularly in light of shrinking civic space in many countries around the world.

• Research Phase 1 (April 2016 – December 2018): research focused on Egypt, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nigeria and Pakistan, and comprised 14 projects:
  1. 1. Accountability for Women’s Equality
     2. Adaptive Programming for Empowerment and Accountability
     3. Alternative Expressions of Citizen Voice
     4. A Study of Bring Back Our Girls
     5. Commissions of Inquiry, Institutions and Violence Accountability in Nigeria’s Middle Belt
     6. Countering Sexual Harassment Collectively
     7. Exercising Her Right to Vote
     8. Governance Diaries
     9. Sound of One Hand Clapping: Holding Economics Actors to Account
     10. Strengthening CSO Legitimacy
     11. Taking Scale into Account
     12. Unruly Politics
     13. Women’s Collective Action for Political Expression
     14. World Bank Citizen Engagement Assessments

Download our report sharing key findings from Phase 1, ‘Empowerment and Accountability in Difficult Settings: What Are We Learning‘ by John Gaventa and Katy Oswald. Watch the animation Empowerment and accountability in fragile, conflict and violence-affected settings which summarises its key findings.

Publications

View all A4EA publications 

A4EA consortium partners

A4EA was led by IDS and implemented by a consortium, including: the Accountability Research Center (USA), the Collective for Social Science Research (Pakistan), Fórum Mulher (Mozambique), the Institute of Development and Economic Alternatives (Pakistan), Instituto de Estudos Sociais e Económicos (IESE) (Mozambique), Itad (UK), Kaleidoscopio (Mozambiqe), Oxfam GB (UK), the Partnership for African Social and Governance Research (Kenya) and Spaces for Change (Nigeria).

More than 150 individuals contributed to the work of A4EA across our two research phases and five years of the programme. Some were involved for a short period, and others for the duration of our work. We gratefully acknowledge their contribution to our work, in particular those involved in field research (many of whom can’t be named for security reasons).

A4EA International Advisory Group

We are grateful to the following people for their time and advice over the years:

• Evelina Dagnino – University of Campinas, S. Paulo, Brazil
• Rosalind Eyben – IDS Emeritus
• Anne-Marie Goetz – Center for Global Affairs, School of Professional Studies, New York University
• Duncan Green, Oxfam/London School of Economics
• Khawar Mumtaz, former Chair of the National Commission on the Status of Women, Pakistan
• Jeff Thindwa, Global Partnership for Social Accountability, World Bank
• Sonia Whitehead, BBC Media Action
• Tessa MacArthur, Dennis Curry, Will Taylor; Department for International Development/Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office

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