Your search

SAVI as a programme does not directly work with state governments – but we work in close conjunction with sister programmes who are supporting state governments on governance and sector reforms. SAVI supports non-government and SHoA partners to play their part in promoting more responsive, inclusive and accountable state governance delivering better services for citizens....

SAVI supports citizen engagement in governance through a facilitated partnership approach, in contrast to the usual approach of grants to civil society organisations (CSOs). The overall aim is to facilitate and support working relationships and processes of reform that are home-grown, self-sustaining and, after initial engagement, not dependent on external support. Our way of working...

SAVI’s theory of change is a simple, practical guide that staff and partners use to plan and to monitor change – as well as to reflect on and enhance their own effectiveness. It sets out broad stages of attitude and behaviour change over time to facilitate effective citizen engagement in governance processes, systems and structures....

Thinking and acting politically is central to the SAVI programme. We support staff and partners to analyse the power relations that shape change in their state, and to use this knowledge to inform their decision-making. This includes decisions made by SAVI state teams relating to the issues and partners they engage with and support, and...

SAVI aims to facilitate replicable and sustainable processes of citizen engagement in governance. The programme in each state is locally defined, flexible and adaptive, and results are not predictable in advance. Standardised monitoring tools are not applicable, and consequently we have evolved our tools and frameworks during the programme through processes of learning by doing....

SAVI state teams provide support to CS groups to become more effective agents of citizens’ voice and public accountability, through a variety of mutually reinforcing interventions. These include: hands-on support to demonstration civil society Advocacy Partnerships (APs) facilitating working partnerships between civil society APs, SHoAs, and the media brokering working relationships between all of these...

We promote attention to gender equality and social inclusion in all of our engagement with CS groups, the media and SHoAs, and in all of the issues and processes they work on. In all the states we work in, we also support partners to focus on some issues and form some partnerships and networks which...

The overall aim of SAVI engagement with the media is for media representation of citizens’ interests to become normal, and play its part in helping state governments to be more responsive, inclusive and accountable to their citizens. Media partners – individual media personnel and selected media houses – are supported to be more effective agents...

The overall aim of SAVI engagement with SHoAs is to promote lasting reforms that are not dependent on external funding and which promote an increasingly more responsive and accountable relationship between Nigerian state governments and their citizens. SHoAs are supported to be more effective agents of citizen voice and public accountability, demanding better performance from...

During the course of a year-long knowledge exchange initiative called the Networked News Lab, a small group of Kenyan journalists and a PhD researcher from the London School of Economics and Political Science sought to identify opportunities for collaboration between newsmakers and practitioners from the field of information and communication technologies for development (ICT4D). In almost every instance, the project failed to promote cooperation between the two groups, though it succeeded...

Marginalised groups and their allies can, and do, use the law and justice systems, including public interest litigation, to improve their access to rights, goods and services.  Yet there is no automatic link between legal action and improved outcomes for poor people.  Where some minimum conditions are met – a progressive legal framework, a sympathetic judiciary and legal advocacy organisation – pro-poor litigation is a potential tool in disputes over rights and resources.  But concrete...

Despite a swathe of critiques of logframes and other blueprint approaches to development over the last 30 years, most aid infrastructure continues to concentrate on the design and subsequent implementation of closed models. This article does not propose an alternative to blueprints, but challenges the inflexibility of their implementation, which is inadequate given the complex nature of social change. It proposes a supplementary management and learning approach which enables implementers to...

Since the beginning of reforms in the late 1970s, China has developed rapidly, transforming itself into a middle-income country, raising hundreds of millions out of poverty and, latterly, developing broad-based social protection systems. The country’s approach to reform has been unorthodox, leading many to talk of a specific Chinese model of development. This paper analyses the role of innovation (chuangxin) and experimentation in the Chinese government repertoire and their contribution to...

Effective public service delivery begins with knowing whether the services offered are working as intended. We launched a system to enable citizen input on the delivery of public services.

We are piloting a new approach to identifying and supporting our partners.  This breaks with convention in many ways in order to improve impact.  SAVI Approach Papers summarise key aspects of SAVI’s way of working. They explain what we do, and why – and link to relevant tools and frameworks. Our approach is summarized in...

 More examples are needed of aid programming that works by being responsive to country realities: politically smart, problem-driven and locally led  DFID’s SAVI programme has revealed a hitherto untapped potential for change leading to better development results at state level in Nigeria  SAVI provides low-profile support to state-level organisations and partnerships, building their capacity to engage constructively with government  It avoid the pitfalls of a donor-driven approach by...

Development assistance programmes that start from careful analysis of what works and what does not in country contexts are still remarkably rare. One reason for this is the lack of well documented examples of ‘politically’ smart aid programming. To this end, this film outlines the experience of the State Accountability and Voice Initiative (SAVI), a DFID-funded programme in Nigeria providing support to civil society, media and governmental organisations.