The Electoral Support Network of Southern Africa (ESN-SA) hosted a three (3) day Election Observation Academy at the Capitol Hotel in Johannesburg from 10 to 12 of April 2024. The academy sought enhance the capacity of ESN- SA members to engage in interventions related to Election Observation, including campaign finance, media and social media monitoring as well as to promote cross and peer learning across domestic observer networks in Southern Africa. In attendance at the academy were 26 representatives from ESN-SA member organisations from Angola, Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Officially opening the academy, the ESN-SA Host Executive Director Rindai Chipfunde Vava, expressed her gratitude to the participants for attending the Election Observation Academy. She also intimated her hope that the academy would be a platform that will foment learning and exchange of ideas in the aspects of Election Observation; Campaign Finance; Media and Social Media Monitoring; Standards and Obligations, the new challenges that domestic observers face in their work among other topics. Vava then highlighted the need for domestic observers to be equipped with adequate skills to observe several impending elections in the region this year, with South Africa scheduled to go to the polls on 29 May 2024.
She further explained that the ESN-SA is part of a consortium for an EU funded project led by the European Partnership for Democracy (EPD) which will run from 2024 -2027. The project aims to contribute to higher levels of electoral integrity in African Union member states and to have a civil society across Africa, including citizen observers, empowered in strengthening electoral systems and processes. Vava also highlighted that it was the ESN-SA’s hope that the academy would enable all members represented to have the capacity to train and deploy observers for elections to be held in the participants’ respective countries.
