Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) has intensified its effort in ensuring that media owners use their medium to effect citizen’s participation in the local governance system in Ghana.
According to the Foundation, citizen’s responsiveness is a key indicator in local governance to ensure that duty bearers improve upon service delivery towards enhancing their economic development.
It is in this light that MFWA launched a project dubbed “Using Radio to Promote Participatory and Effective Local Governance for the three Northern regions in Tamale for 8 selected radio stations with 16 journalists in the three northern regions.
The project which forms part of MFWA’s media democratization program is under the auspice of IBIS-Ghana. The project is expected to build the capacities of about 16 journalists on the need to focus on educating the citizens on how to hold officialdom accountable.
The selected radio stations are also expected to come out with quality local governance reporting and programming that focus on local development and governance issues.
The project also seeks to build strong collaboration between the selected radio stations and their respective municipal, metropolitan and district assemblies to facilitate access to the radio stations by assemblies to engaging with the citizens through radio.
The Deputy Executive Director of MFWA, Sulemana Braimah said his outfit in collaboration with IBIS-Ghana will provide financial and technical support to the selected radio stations to come out with development- oriented programmes that will help facilitate development in the rural areas.
Mr. Sulemana stressed the important role media play in setting agenda and creating platform for citizen’s engagement with local authorities in strengthening local governance. He expressed the hope that the project will contribute to limiting agitations as a result of communication gap between local authorities, especially in this year’s election.
The northern regional minister Moses Bukari Mabengba underscored the importance of information and communication; saying it constitutes a key building block sustainable of Ghana’s democracy.
Mr. Mabengba added that the media also serve as a monitoring agent to help keep all institutions and stakeholders on their toes to be transparent and accountable to the citizenry.
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