Enhancing Accountability in Busia County: CEDC’s ‘Kagua Maendeleo Mashinani’ Initiative

The Community Empowerment and Development Centre (CEDC) is making significant strides in improving accountability and service delivery in Busia County through its ‘Kagua Maendeleo Mashinani’ project. This initiative aims to strengthen governance by enhancing citizen engagement and ensuring public participation in monitoring service delivery and public finance management. One of the key tools employed by CEDC in this process is the ‘Community Scorecard’, a participatory mechanism designed to assess and enhance the quality of public services.

In partnership with URAIA Trust, CEDC is conducting a community scorecard process at Umala Water Project in Marachi West. This initiative empowers residents with the necessary knowledge and skills to evaluate water services, identify critical deficiencies that hinder access to clean and safe water and generate possible solutions to address the challenges.

The Community Scorecard Process at Umala water project.

• Stakeholders’ Inception Meeting – A platform for discussing key challenges in water services and selecting facilitators to drive the process.

• Training of Facilitators – Equipping community facilitators with the skills to identify and develop relevant service indicators.

• Data Collection – Engaging 1,000 service users through focus group discussions to assess health service delivery.

• Data collation and analysis– generating evidence based data to inform and shape budget decisions and public deliberations.

• Validation Meeting – Authenticating collected data and findings.

• Interface Meeting – CEDC Plans to conduct the interface meeting  on 21st March 2025 to Develop a joint action plan to address identified service gaps and improve healthcare quality.

Through this initiatives, CEDC continues to champion open governance, ensuring that communities have a voice in shaping the services they receive.