The importance of thinking and working politically in programs concerned with governance and institutional reform is widely recognized – but shifting from thinking politically to working politically is proving a major challenge. The State Accountability and Voice Initiative (SAVI), a governance reform program in Nigeria, supports local partners and stakeholders not through the usual accountable grants, but through mentoring, capacity building, relationship brokering and seed funding. This approach is making headway in enabling local partners and stakeholders to think and work in politically savvy ways around locally agreed problems – and its success is demonstrated in tangible examples of more responsive state governance in all the states where the program works.
The SAVI program in Nigeria, a DFID-funded Empowerment and Accountability program operating in ten states, is included as a case study, among others, in ODI’s new report Adapting Development.