Sustainable Democracy

Environment

Gender

Governance

Human Development

Economic Development

SUSTAINABLE DEMOCRACY

This is a regional information programme on democracy and governance which aims to collect and disseminate information, and to share regional expertise within the 14-member Southern African Development Community (SADC), with the vision of strengthening sustainable democratic development, based on the perspective that, Democracy is more than just an election, it is a culture that cannot be imposed but must be developed from within. The central objective is to assist governments, organisations and people of the SADC region to move quickly and effectively toward the empowerment and involvement of people in development, through collection and provision of relevant and accessible information, based on national and regional perspectives. One of the main reasons for inaccessibility of information is the lack of functional information-retrieval systems. SARDC is an established regional institution with considerable expertise in this area, with strong regional databases and information dissemination programmes. The programme on Sustainable Democracy (SD) produces:

Renaissance: A Review of Democracy and Governance in Southern Africa, quarterly;
a series of 12 Democracy factfiles on the governance structures of SADC countries.

SD also runs a project for strengthening regional elections coverage by the media the region, through taking journalists from SADC countries to cover elections in another country, and widening access, including electronic, to bibliographic and contacts data bases on democracy and governance issues. Partners are IPS, SABA, Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) and a wide range of media outlets and media training institutes in most SADC countries, funding from USAID RCSA. The programmes on environment, gender and democracy have published a joint series of media handbooks, that are also very popular with non-media organizations, due to the inclusion of regional contacts and background information, including international agreements; and these are also used by parliamentarians and others as reference books.

Reporting the Southern African Environment;
Reporting Gender in Southern Africa; and
Reporting Elections in Southern Africa.

For more information please contact webmaster@sardc.net

Information is a key strategic resource for socio-economic development.

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