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 five 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, reformist government officials and other stakeholders to design and implement lasting solutions to chronic basic service delivery problems.
- Advocate for improved budget transparency and participation.
Read more about IBP South Africa here.
Asivikelane is is a coalition of 10 grassroots organisations working together to amplify the voices of informal settlement residents about basic services.
Asivikelane facts and figures:
- Asivikelane means ‘Let’s protect one another’ in isiZulu.
- Of South Africa’s 60 million people, 14 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 500 informal settlements that provides a platform for urban informal settlement residents to engage with government about basic service delivery reforms.
- Since its creation in 2020, Asivikelane has helped improve services to over 6 million people.
Asivikelane’s hub model for solving service delivery problems:
- Asivikelane convenes multi-stakeholder hubs of informal settlement residents, government officials, community organisations – like DAG and Planact – and other stakeholders like the Auditor General of South Africa, C40, Nicro, and training colleges.
- Hub participants co-design and implement lasting solutions to service delivery problems and their underlying budget challenges.
- IBP South Africa currently convenes 10 hubs that each focus on issues of Water, Sanitation, Refuse removal, Repairs & Maintenance of infrastructure, and Disaster Management).
What Asivikelane does:
- IBP South Africa and other Asivikelane partners train residents on budget and service delivery systems, data collection and navigating government organograms.
- Residents then collect regular data 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.
- We believe that by training residents, enabling the collection of service delivery data, and providing them with diagnostics of budget and service delivery system problems enables them to engage government as equals.
