Cameroun Open Participatory Budget (COPB) – Phase II

Context :

The Cameroon Open Participatory Budget (COPB) – Phase II project is a flagship initiative spearheaded by AfroLeadership. It designed to foster deep citizen engagement in local governance by maximizing access to municipal budgetary data. The project specifically targeted vulnerable and historically marginalized demographics—notably youth, women, and persons living with disabilities—equipping them with the training and civic tools required to actively co-steer local development.

Through integrated civic technologies and community-level capacity building, the project successfully demystified municipal finance, transforming public budgets into transparent, interactive instruments for local development.

Institutional Anchorage & Communal Partnerships

To anchor these transparency mechanisms within official administrative frameworks, the project management unit initiated formal MoUs and partnership agreements across five key target municipalities:

• Executed Partnerships (Signed MoUs):

  • Commune of Ntui (Centre Region)

  • Commune of Belabo (East Region)

  • Commune of Bertoua 2ème (East Region)

• Advanced Partnerships (Pending Formal Signature):

  • Commune of Akono (Centre Region)

  • Commune of Okola (Centre Region)

Additionally, the Commune of Ebolowa 1er (South Region) was actively integrated into the field deployment for tailored civic awareness and budget popularization workshops.

Civic Tech Innovation: The Digital Open Budget Portal

A cornerstone of Phase II was the expansion and security upgrade of the project’s digital ecosystem. Hosted on a highly secure, dedicated international virtual server with extended 2-year infrastructure protections, the system operates across two key access points:

• The Technical Tracking Portal: luxwebhostingservices.net/copb

• The Project Informational Site: www.openlocalbudget.org

Key Innovative Features Implemented:

• The “State Budget” Module: Allows citizens to intuitively browse and dissect the national budget allocations broken down by socioeconomic sectors and geographic regions.

• The “Citizen Opinion” Interactive Hub: A digital feedback loop where community members can comment on specific local budgets, upload supporting field imagery, and interact with other users. Crucially, designated municipal officials have direct access to reply, clarify data points, and rectify misinformation, establishing a digital bridge for institutional dialogue.

Inclusive Capacity Building & Field Mobilization

The field operations delivered structured training seminars across the target regions, empowering 257 civil society leaders to monitor public investment expenditures effectively.

Workshop Participation Breakdown

Phase I Delegate Sustainability

To secure legacy knowledge, AfroLeadership hosted two specialized refresher workshops in Bafoussam (9 delegates) and Yaoundé (14 delegates), reinforcing the tracking capacities of 21 foundational Phase I delegates and supplying them with standardized budget monitoring toolkits.

Risk Management & Legal Compliance

The primary challenge encountered during project execution was systemic institutional hesitation regarding the open disclosure of local financial datasets.

To mitigate this, AfroLeadership deployed a compliance-driven collection strategy grounded in Cameroonian legislation. The advocacy and formal collection letters leveraged Article 41 (Paragraphs 1 & 2) of the General Code of Regional and Local Authorities (CTD) along with the State’s modernized financial regulations, which legally bind municipalities to make public accounts accessible for citizen appraisal. This legislative framework successfully unlocked the official voted budgets and administrative statements for the 2020 and 2021 financial years.

Media Amplification & Project Visibility

To ensure the project’s results resonated nationwide, AfroLeadership executed a comprehensive, bilingual multimedia communication campaign.

• Physical Visibility Collateral: 99 project briefing booklets (English/French), 134 participant T-shirts, 20 supervisor polo shirts, 2 roll-up kakemonos, and 1 large event banner were distributed across all target hubs.

• Audiovisual & Digital Footprint: The project field operations were covered by local community radio networks and national broadcast television (Info TV). Five localized video case studies and a comprehensive project implementation documentary were produced for syndication on the project website, communal social channels (Facebook, X, LinkedIn), and AfroLeadership website