African Monitor was established in 2006 as an independent continental body to monitor development funding commitments, funding delivery as well as the impact on grassroots communities. African Monitor also works towards bringing strong additional African voices to the development agenda. Our vision is of an African continent rapidly achieving its development potential, whose people live in dignity, in a just society where basic needs are met, human rights are upheld, and good governance entrenched. In the years 2011 – 2015,  African Monitor is organizing its work under the theme “Unlocking the African Moment:  A grassroots led agenda.”  This forward-looking action-oriented theme was identified after an extensive review of African Monitor’s work in the last five years since its inception; and upon an in-depth assessment of Africa’s current development trajectory.  There have been many indications of developmental achievements of African countries in the last few years.  For instance there has been good economic performance over the last ten years accompanied by positive social gains.   Read On...

The reality of Africa’s grassroots communities is that they are systematically excluded in development processes. Evidence shows that African economies have been systematically shedding jobs in the Agricultural sector for at least the last three decades. At the same time, growth of industry (manufacturing sector) has stagnated, and in parts has dramatically decreased. Learning to cope with this systematic exclusion, grassroots communities have found creative ways to generate their own incomes – largely through the informal  sector and subsistence agriculture.
African Monitor has taken time to understand how the poor currently live and survive, hypothesizing that a better understanding of how communities currently survive will lead to improved understanding of how development actors can work with grassroots communities to strengthen and sustain their livelihoods. We at African Monitor learnt that most of the poor survive by engaging actively and creatively in small income generating activities within the informal sector. They consist of the rural  Read On...

One of the African Monitor’s programmes is the Grassroots Focus Index (GFI). It is a pilot[1] effort by African Monitor that seeks to generate an index that assesses and determines the extent of grassroots prioritization in development. The grassroots are broadly defined as the poor and marginalized groups whose voices are too disparate to be heard by policy makers. The index and overall GFI methodology is expected to provide a useful advocacy tool for promoting grassroots prioritization. 

• The GFI seeks to address the following key questions; 
  
• To what extent have African governments and donors been able to prioritize the grassroots in their development policy priorities and strategies?  Read On...