Our Work

Our Areas of Focus

Local and National Advocacy

This has included policy advocacy on service delivery with local authority officials (Mayors Councillors and council staff) as well as central government officials from the Ministry of Local Government. BPRA has also conducted public advocacy on corruption, service delivery, public awareness campaigns, petitioning, marches, pickets, and demonstrations.

Capacity Building Programs

We conduct capacity building initiatives including trainings, coaching, and other capacity enhancing processes with our members, leaders, and other local government stakeholders. These efforts have translated into a critical mass with the ability to influence local and national policies.

Support and Incubation

BPRA has incubated and assisted in the development of other Residents Associations in various parts of the country, including Gweru, Plumtree and Hwange. This has led to growth in the Residents Movement in the country, assisting in strengthening BPRA’s advocacy hand, especially on local government issues that require national attention and action, like devolution, introduction of pre-paid water meters, and the constitutionalisation of local governance.

Social Accountability

This strand of work has been one of BPRA’s key work pillars, and has seen BPRA conduct various activities in the local government public expenditure management cycle. These include residents-local authority engagement meetings, local authority and national budget tracking and analysis, residents and public officials training workshops on various elements of social accountability.

Research and Policy Analysis

This work stream has been employed by BPRA to support the other 4 workstream, ensuring that advocacy is evidence based, capacity building informed by needs assessments, while incubation is informed by both best practice and BPRA’s experience, and that social accountability is informed by credible information bases. Research is usually on the main issues afflicting, inhibiting or enabling sound local government, including grounded policy analysis of key policy instruments in the local governance and service delivery spheres.

Our Achievements

Campaigned Against Privatisation of Water

BPRA’s effective mobilisation of residents’ resistance compelled the Bulawayo City Council to abandon the move to privatise water, and the compulsory and forced introduction of pre-paid water meters in Bulawayo in 2015

Defending Democratic Local Representation

BPRA successfully stopped the undemocratic imposition of Special Interest Counsellors to the Bulawayo City Council by the Minister of Local Government without the participation of residents and the special interest groups that the appointees were meant to represent, such as People Living with Disabilities.

Blocked Centralization of Procurement

BPRA lobbied Parliament to block the centralization of procurement processes by local authorities to the capital city as proposed by the General Laws Amendment Bill of 2010 which would have negatively impacted on effective service delivery in peripheral cities and towns.

Driving Public Fund Accountability

BPRA successfully campaigned for the programs audit following a BPRA commissioned research which unearthed irregularities and cases of corruption in the implementation of the project. The campaign and subsequent audit resulted in accountability and greater transparency in the implementation of the project. BPRA was also instrumental campaigning for audits of the Constituency Development Funds (CDF), as good practice following residents’ suspicions of funds abuse.

Building a Better Bulawayo, One Resident At a Time

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