MISA has partnered with other
organisations on the continent to lobby
for an African platform on Access to
information at the 20th Anniversary of the
Windhoek Declaration on Press Freedom in
2011. MISA regional is the secretariat for
the campaign for more details a website
www.windhoekplus20.org
has
been
developed specifically for this project.

Programme B:

Media Freedom
Monitoring and
Research

Zimbabwe has equally run a sustained
grassroots campaign using popular arts
such as theatre to popularise access to
information resulting in an increased
public understanding on access to
information.

IMPACT
The perception by civil society and the
public of Access to Information as a
right only affecting the media is quickly
changing. There is a growing understanding
of Access to Information by policymakers,
civil society and public alike. This is the
case especially in countries were MISA has
run sustained and consistent campaigns.
Zambia has in the last two years run a

Challenges
Funding and high staff turn-over both at
national and regional level

30

SOMALIA, Mogadishu : FILES
African Union peacekeepers
take cover 15 May 2007 as two
Somali photographers point their
cameras towards the site where
the troops were detonating seized
ammunition in Mogadishu.. AFP

Program B

daily phone-in radio and weekly television
programme “meet the press’ in which
access to information has been discussed
and deconstructed to make it relevant
for the ordinary citizen. In addition to
the above, MISA has lobbied and made
presentation to the constitutional review
commission to make Access to Information
a constitutional right. In Mozambique the
MISA draft Access to Information law has
been taken up by the government and is
undergoing discussion with a possibility
that it will be adopted as the national law.

institutions who before the research
could not respond to information request,
Tanzania is one such country in which
public institutions are responding in as
little as two days.

Select target paragraph3