STAR Ghana Foundation lends its support to a public lecture on the theme: “Aki@80 - Celebrating a Life of Academic Excellence, Public Service, Thought Leadership and Activism” in honour of Professor Akilagpa Sawyerr (Aki) who turned 80 in March 2019. The celebration – hosted by the Third World Network and the Institute of Demographic Governance, is organized around three inter-linked themes that emerge from Aki’s life and work: Academic intellectual; Public Life/Service and Activism/Thought Leadership. The two-day celebration is scheduled for Thursday 5th and Friday 6th September 2019 at the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences in Accra, Ghana. Alongside the public lecture and series of presentations of papers is a photo exhibition that captures Aki’s life and work.
In celebrating Aki at 80, we at the STAR Ghana Foundation are celebrating more than the man and his impact on his society. We are also celebrating the journey of civil society in Ghana since the early 1980s when Professor Akilagpa Sawyerr (Aki) provided leadership for the Structural Adjustment Programme Review Initiative (SAPRI), a civil society-led initiative to deepen citizens’ voices and engagement with the structural adjustment programme.
The story of the STAR-Ghana programme and its evolution into the STAR Ghana Foundation cannot be told without acknowledging the critical role of Professor Sawyerr. He challenged the programme from the get go to look beyond its primary function as a donor fund management mechanism, leading to a second phase that engaged more actively with civil society in Ghana. He challenged and chivvied and supported the donors, civil society and the STAR Ghana Steering Committee to explore strategies for supporting civil society to consolidate and deepen its work in support of a just society in the following ways.
Transforming a fund management mechanism into a tool for social transformation:
Owing to its design, the managers of the first phase of the STAR-Ghana programme approached its implementation from what could be described as a ‘managerialist’ angle, focusing on achieving log-frame outputs and indicators, disbursing grants efficiently through a compliance-heavy strategy and focusing on ‘tried and tested’ CSOs. The Programme Steering Committee, chaired by Aki, engaged with the donors, the programme management team and broader civil society in Ghana on what the programme should be focusing on to contribute to transformational change in the society. As he usually put it, ‘these log-frames and theory of change mean nothing if they are not linked to the real issues confronting the nation and programme strategy is not located within the experiences of civil society’s struggles over the years for good governance and inclusive development. I don’t want to be part of a log-frame programme’.
By the end of the first five (5) years, STAR-Ghana had broadened the scope of its support to include work with community-based organisations, the media and less formally organised CSOs. It had moved away from a grant making facility to an iterative programme that used a combination of strategies to engage with and support civil society around issues they considered important. Mechanisms such as the Technical Reference Group and the Gender and Social Inclusion Advisory Group had been set up to expand the scope of contact and engagement between the programme and its stakeholders.
Civil society support beyond ‘traditional’ donors:
From the start of the STAR-Ghana programme in 2010, and perhaps long before, one question or message Aki kept repeating was:
“… so after the STAR-Ghana programme or the next iteration of the programme, what next? We have seen donor programmes come and often go, sometimes at a time when they are beginning to achieve traction. Then the next programme starts the process all over again. We cannot achieve any meaningful progress with 5-year projects. Let us challenge ourselves to come up with something and invite whoever is interested to get involved…”
This set the tone for the discussions preceding the end of the first phase of the programme and the design of the second phase. The second phase therefore deliberately set out to support the development of a national entity to support the strengthening of civil society and its work towards inclusive and sustainable development. The launch of the STAR Ghana Foundation in November 2018 was the realisation of Aki’s dream and the result of his pushing and challenging and brokering relationships within civil society and between civil society and its stakeholders. Perhaps the Foundation should have been called the Aki Foundation for Civil Society Strengthening!
STAR Ghana Foundation congratulates our Friend, Mentor, and Teacher for his invaluable contribution to the development of a vibrant civil society in Ghana and challenging our notions of what active citizenship involves. We look forward to several more years of such invigorating leadership and wish him the best of everything in the years ahead.
