About OSISA

The Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA) is a leading Johannesburg-based foundation established in 1997, working in ten Southern Africa countries: Angola, Botswana, DRC, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe. OSISA works differently in each of these nine countries, according to local conditions. There are specialised programme managers in Angola, Zimbabwe and Swaziland – these being the three countries in which significant structural governance questions still obtain.

OSISA is part of a network of autonomous foundations, established by George Soros, located in Eastern and Central Europe, the former Soviet Union, Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, the Middle East, Southeast Asia and the US.

OSISA’s vision is to promote and sustain the ideals, values, institutions and practice of open society. OSISA’s vision is that of a vibrant Southern African society in which people, free from material and other deprivation, understand their rights and responsibilities and participate democratically in all spheres of life.

In pursuance of this vision, OSISA’s mission is to initiate and support programmes working towards open society ideals, and to advocate for these ideals in Southern Africa. This approach involves looking beyond immediate symptoms, in order to address the deeper problems – focusing on changing underlying policy, legislation and practice, rather than on short-term welfarist interventions.

Given the enormity of the needs and challenges in the region it operates in, and acknowledging that it cannot possibly meet all of these needs, OSISA, where appropriate, supports advocacy work by its partners in the respective countries, or joins partners in advocacy on shared objectives and goals. In other situations, OSISA directly initiates and leads in advocacy interventions, along the key thematic programmes that guide its work. OSISA also intervenes through the facilitation of new and innovative initiatives and partnerships, through capacity building initiatives as well as through grantmaking.

OSISA has structured its work along six strategic thematic areas as follows:

• The two “building-block” programmes of Education and Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs);

• The two frontline rights programmes of Human Rights and Democracy Building (HRDB) and Media; and –

• The two public policy programmes of Economic Justice and HIV and AIDS.

In addition, Language Rights and Gender and Women’s Rights are cross-cutting themes in all of OSISA’s work.

This programme configuration is cognizant of the premise that for there to be a vibrant society, a society that would articulate its rights and participate in the governance of its affairs, the people in such a society must have access to education; the society must be economically viable; the society must have access to information and the necessary technologies to access information and to communicate; the society must not be barred from articulating its needs due to linguistic limitations or discrimination; the society must have robust mechanisms for confronting public health issues such as HIV and AIDS; and the society must respect the rights of women as individuals and as equal partakers in the life of families, communities, and nations.

Within the above context, the current key strategies that OSISA is deploying in its work include:

• The significant scaling up of programming in Angola. This is aided by a Brazil-Angola-Mozambique capacity building link project.

• A focus on issues around resource transparency, through which such flagship projects as Education Watch and the Southern Africa Resource Watch have been initiated within OSISA.

• The fact that Zimbabwe and Swaziland remain countries where OSISA closely watches governance, pursuing regional and international advocacy towards democratic solutions.

• The work OSISA is doing, with respect to HIV and AIDS, on law reform and policy issues, resource tracking, and strengthening the voice of people living with HIV or AIDS. Sitting at the world epicenter of the pandemic where interventions by other actors are numerous, if not necessarily effectual, OSISA has opted for these three strategic approaches, as opposed to supporting service delivery projects.

• The realisation that elections in the Southern Africa region remain one of the most visible threats or opportunities to the regional democratic space, and that therefore OSISA must continue to provide leadership in supporting the evolution of fully enforceable democratic norms and standards for elections observation, management and monitoring in Southern Africa.

• The work that OSISA is executing on human rights regional standard-setting and implementation, including OSISA’s support for the domestication of treaty law in the Southern Africa region.

• Economic Justice work, which is mainly premised on enabling public budget transparency, as well as on strengthening civil society oversight with respect to the use of natural resources in the region.

• OSISA’s support for a media development loan fund to expand media options, in addition to the support of projects on protecting media workers under threat, reforming media policy (including in broadcasting), and monitoring media performance in the region.

• OSISA’s recent launch of a Southern Africa Litigation Centre to support and grow human rights and constitutional litigation in the region. In addition, OSISA builds the capacity of bar associations in Southern Africa to defend the rule of law.

• OSISA’s leadership in Education for All campaigning in the region, working with UNESCO and other partners; in addition to increasing access to learning materials through open source interventions in ICT, for instance through Education in a Box or specialised packages such as the Electronic Information for Libraries programme with Universities in the region.

• A regional project on policy, legislative and bureaucratic practice reform towards access to information by citizens as policy actors.

• The advocacy work on constitutions and constitutionalism.

• OSISA’s partnership with the SADC Parliamentary Forum, seeking to assist civil society organisations to effectively engage with intergovernmental institutions.