Access to Information in Africa

For a long time, Africa has 'lagged' behind global advances in transparency, but there are now significant developments on the continent. In a ground-breaking book, Access to Information in Africa brings together for the first time a collection of African academics and practitioners to contribute to the fast-growing body of scholarship that is now accumulating internationally. This is therefore an African account of progress made and setbacks suffered, but also an account of challenges and obstacles that confront both policy-makers and practitioners. These challenges must be overcome if greater public access to information is to make a distinctive, positive contribution to the continent’s democratic and socio-economic future. This book offers a necessarily multi-dimensional perspective on the state of ATI in African jurisdictions and the emerging, new praxis - a praxis that will entail a genuine domestication of the right of access to information on the continent.

Fatima Diallo is a PhD affiliate in Legal Anthropology at the African Studies Centre, Leiden. As a Senegalese constitutionalist from Gaston Berger University, she is the deputy general secretary of the African Network of Constitutional Lawyers where she acted, for the past years, as the engine of the Access to Information Working Group. She was dedicated to monitor the network research agenda on governmental transparency and accountability.

Richard Calland is Associate Professor of Public Law at the University of Cape Town. In a recent Columbia University publication on measuring the impact of access to information, Professor Sheila Coronel described Calland as "a South African activist and academic who was one of the pioneers of the global Right to Information movement". In recent years, Calland convened the Access to Information Working Group of the African Network of Constitutional Lawyers.