Civil society ... hope for African countries to combat corruption.

Partners for Transparency issued a study entitled Social Accountability as a Mechanism to Combat Corruption in African Countries, in the context of the Foundation's attempts to promote the values of integrity, transparency and good governance in African countries, through the Foundation's Africa Corruption Observatory Unit.

This study dealt with the concept of accountability and social according to the visions of many, including the United Nations Development Program, and most of these visions came in the context of a group of individuals and groups exercising some kind of control over the practices of officials and then holding them accountable if they committed legal violations, through means including making recommendations For concerned government institutions.

The study also clarified the inexorable relationship between social accountability and combating corruption, which was evident in the affirmation of a number of international conventions concerned with combating corruption on the role of civil society organizations in the anti-corruption process, including the United Nations Convention and the African Union against Corruption.

The study reached a number of results, among which is that the will of the ruling elites with regard to combating corruption is a primary factor in order to activate social accountability tools. Likewise, some African models have benefited from the progress made in the use of technology and social media to exercise some kind of control. And the detection of irregularities in the police sector, which has been achieved in Kenya, which confirms the importance of benefiting from digital progress in enhancing social accountability measures.

In addition, the Partners for Transparency Foundation recommends, through this study, a number of recommendations, including:

• Activating the texts of international conventions on combating corruption, with regard to the role of civil society organizations in combating illegal practices.
• Attention to bringing about changes in the curricula of students at all stages in order to enhance the state of awareness of the importance of reporting corruption.
• The need for the African Union to adopt a clear strategy for social accountability in African countries and to define the mechanisms for its operation and how to activate it in all countries.

In African countries, study social accountability