About
IBP South Africa is a team of experienced activists and government budget experts. We registered as an NPO in 2018, but for many of us, our work in South Africa dates back to the 1990s.
As a team, we are committed to:
- Reforms of government budget and service delivery systems that provide basic services to all.
- Diagnosing problems within these systems with, and from the perspective of, the users of these services.
- Lasting change that is co-owned by government and the people.
Our work pursues these specific objectives:
- Train informal settlement residents to understand and engage in government budget and service delivery systems.
- Monitor the delivery of basic services in informal settlements.
- Analyse and identify the budgetary reasons for poor service delivery.
- Convene informal settlement residents, government officials and other stakeholders to design and implement lasting solutions to chronic basic service delivery problems.
- Advocate for improved budget transparency and participation.
- Work with communities and civil society to strengthen collective budget agency to make public money work for all people – transforming budgets from closed government documents into democratic tools for equity and accountability.
Read more about IBP South Africa here.
Asivikelane: Voices of informal settlement residents
Communities + government = better budgets and services
Who is Asivikelane?
Asivikelane is a coalition of grassroots organisations working across South Africa to amplify the voices of informal settlement residents about basic services. We bring together residents, municipal officials, civil society partners, training colleges and oversight institutions to tackle service delivery challenges.
Hosted by IBP South Africa, Asivikelane promotes dignity, agency and better living conditions for vulnerable residents, ensuring their needs are prioritized in local government planning and spending.
We believe that by training residents, collecting service delivery evidence, and providing diagnostics of budget and service delivery system problems, we can enable residents to engage government.
Asivikelane facts and figures:
- Asivikelane means ‘Let’s protect one another’ in isiZulu.
- Of South Africa’s 60 million people,10 million live in informal settlements, most of whom face daily challenges in accessing water, sanitation and refuse removal services.
- Asivikelane has created a network of informal settlements that provides a platform for urban informal settlement residents to engage with government about basic service delivery reforms.
What Asivikelane does
- Asivikelane convenes multi-stakeholder hubs of informal settlement residents, municipal officials, civil society partners, training colleges and oversight institutions to tackle service delivery challenges.
- Hub participants co-design and implement lasting solutions to service delivery problems and their underlying budget challenges.
- Asivikelane convenes service delivery hubs, each focusing on issues of water, sanitation, solid waste management, repairs & maintenance of infrastructure, or disaster management.
- We currently work in Buffalo City, Cape Town, eThekwini, Johannesburg, Knysna, Mangaung, Tshwane, and Nelson Mandela Bay.
What IBP South Africa does within Asivikelane:
- IBP South Africa and other Asivikelane partners train residents on budget and service delivery systems, evidence collection and navigating government organograms.
- Residents then collect evidence about their access to water, clean toilets, and waste removal.
- IBP South Africa researches who in government is responsible, what level of service they should be providing, and the reasons they don’t provide this level of service.
