Reflecting on a decade of joint policy advocacy with multi-agency

coalitions: some breakdown and breakthroughs

By Irũngũ HoughtonOxfam Pan Africa Director

First phase: 2003-2005• Advocacy on Africa: G8 & WTO Summitry, Make

Trade Fair joint advocacy, joint statements, papers, mini-grants, MPs and CSOs, SEATINI

Second phase: 2005-2009• Advocacy on and in Africa: G8, UN & AU

Summitry, drop debt, increase dev finance and Women’s Protocol, joint advocacy, joint statements, papers, mini-grants, online media petitions, women’s orgs and national CSO coalitions, formation of GCAP and SOAWR

Third phase: 2010-2012• Advocacy in and less on Africa: AU Summitry,

ratification and implementation of AU standards, multi-country programming, large third party funding on women’s protocol, joint advocacy, joint statements, papers, large grants, www.soawr.org, www.sotu-africa.org, FB presence, direct self re-presentation

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Major changes2003 – 2012

NBI=NBI/ADD/DAK

Single=multi-affiliate

1=15 people

100k = 2.2m GBP

2,000 contacts

Internal and external

recognition

• Combining digital/social media with mass media has most power

• Co-constructing the campaign purpose and ways of working around what matters to partners prior to fundraising externally

• Be willing to walk away when you have exhausted all avenues to build capacity with partners

• Be willing to hold back the Oxfam machine when it does not work for the partners we are supporting

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• Knowledge (context, contacts) critical but insufficient without imagination and leadership

• Building public awareness through digital campaigning without policy or practice change objectives is escapism

• Where absent, norms building important but real challenge is changing behaviour of states

• Constructing multi-country campaigns around multi-layered objectives within a broad campaign purpose enables agency at all levels

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Lessons from a decade of campaigning & advocacyOur campaigns will have power, impact and sustainability if they;1. Enable citizens voice and agency: (we can transform this!)2. Deploy tools, tactics and spaces that create mass constituency

and impact3. Shift power, resources and investment and priorities of states

and multi-lateral institutions4. Situate the state as primary duty-bearer for guaranteeing rights

and freedoms5. Seek to interrupt the almost predictable future of misery, neglect

and inaction by states, public, you and me6. Remain agile and exercise a constant capability to reinvent

itself as the context shifts

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