©Afreepress-(Lomé, Aug. 4, 2017)- A training workshop began Thursday in Lomé at Hotel Ibis. This training workshop has been organized by the “Coalition des Organisations de la Société Civile pour un Développement Inclusif (COSCiDi)”. This workshop, with the theme : “Citizen control of public action and advocacy tools and techniques of action”, has been organized to fortify the capacity and competence of civil society organizations in the field of controlling or monitoring public actions, advocacy and lobbying in order to develop technical skills for the mobilization of resources and for the implementation of public policies in the country, to ensure development.

The “Plan National de Development (PND)”, that is, the national development plan, will be the scheme or framework for the implementation of these public policies for the next five years through decentralization. Due to this, the Government of Togo has put into practice or implemented diverse programs with the aim or objective is to fight against poverty through inclusive development. Promoting this, are the “Objectives de Development Durable (ODD)”, who are also focused on the “fight against poverty” project including the 2063 agenda of the African Union.

One major challenge for good governance and effective participative democracy is the involvement of civil society in local and national development through the decentralization process. This is as a result of the failure to participate fully in public affairs; meanwhile, “participatory governance” is a requirement for development representatives or speakers. To achieve this, there is a need to strengthen the means of action of the society for the improvement of the public services.

It has however, been noticed that civil society organizers have had some limitations in their participation in the development process. Representatives of civil society have realized that, though they participate in development programs, they are not sufficiently involved. This is to say that, they don’t partake fully. Some causes of this low involvement are technical, political, administrative and organizational. In terms of supervision, their influence is limited, because of their inability to adopt systematic and methodical approaches for good results.

It is because of these that the “Coalition des Organisations de la Société Civile pour un Développement Inclusif (COSCiDI)”, have taken the initiative to train members to increase their capacities and competence in the monitoring of public actions, advocacy and lobbying and also to participate effectively in the development of national policies.

There are 100 participants involved in this training workshop.

Patricia I.