A country’s civic space can reveal a great deal to investors, businesses, and citizens about the degree of freedom with which people can participate in the economy and hold institutions to account. It encompasses three essential freedoms — expression, peaceful assembly, and association — as well as the obligation of governments to protect them.
A healthy civic space can deliver significant benefits to African economies by enabling problems to be identified before they become more costly, and by giving governments access to feedback from communities affected by policies, programmes, and major infrastructure projects.
For investors, factors such as the tax burden, natural resources, and market size matter, but so does the predictability of the operating environment. Countries where business leaders, media organisations, and civil society groups can freely question government decisions tend to foster greater transparency and accountability, making them potentially more attractive destinations for investment.
An open civic space also allows groups affected by specific decisions to voice their concerns, negotiate with authorities, and participate in processes that shape their lives.
According to CIVICUS — the global alliance bringing together civil society organisations and activists from more than 175 countries — 44 of the 50 countries and territories in Sub-Saharan Africa have civic space rated as obstructed, repressed, or closed. More than 80% of the region’s population lives in countries where civic space is repressed or closed.
Only Cape Verde and São Tomé and Príncipe are classified as countries with open civic space.
There are, however, some signs of improvement. Senegal, Gabon, and Mauritania recorded advances in the most recent assessment, demonstrating that civic conditions can evolve when governments implement reforms and broaden the space for civil society participation.
The following are the African countries with the best civic space conditions, according to CIVICUS, on a scale of 1 to 100, where 100 represents the best conditions and 1 the worst.
The CIVICUS Monitor draws on data from civil society organisations, international indices, research teams, and the organisation’s own specialists to classify countries as open, narrowed, obstructed, repressed, or closed.
The organisation notes that its annual report, People Power Under Attack, assesses the state of civic space conditions based on data collected throughout the year by country-focused civil society organisations, regional research teams, international human rights indices, and in-house CIVICUS Monitor specialists.
Source: Diário Económico
Original article: https://www.diarioeconomico.co.mz/?p=533082
