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Policy success across Africa depends on a fundamental rethink of how governments communicate with citizens, according to experts at a webinar hosted by the International Association of Business Communicators West Africa Interest Group.
The panel, titled “When Good Policies Don’t Deliver: The Strategic Communications Advantage,” featured former Nigerian Bureau of Public Service Reforms Director General Joe Abah, World Trade Organisation media adviser Paul Nwabiukwu, and strategic communications consultant Gifty Bingley.
Abah, who led reform functions in Nigeria, told the webinar that he was “shocked” upon entering government by how little officials considered the experiences of ordinary citizens.
“The starting point would be… I was shocked how little people within the secretariat think about people outside the secretariat,” Abah said during the virtual discussion.
“All of the reforms that had gone before me had been centered on the public service.”
According to Abah, his solution was to reframe public service reform around the citizen’s experience. A survey he conducted revealed, he said, that citizens’ primary grievances with government occur during direct contact – whether obtaining passports, driver’s licenses or tax clearances.
“The mentality of ‘you exist to serve the people, you must listen to the people, you must take feedback’ must be abused,” Abah said, defining a public servant as “a servant of the public.”
Bingley said in the webinar that communication must begin during policy formulation, not after decisions are made.
“If you’re showing up with contempt to announce it or not doing consultation, then the change is going to be very difficult and almost impossible,” she said.
“Change itself is not the issue; it is how the change affects me. That is where the challenge is.”
She said implementation rarely rests with leadership. “Change is often announced by leadership, but implementation and execution is underground,” Bingley said.
“When you don’t have buy-in, it doesn’t matter how much change you want to drive – that change itself will fail by design.”
Meanwhile, Nwabiukwu also stressed that African governments must begin communicating policies early and build a foundation of trust with citizens to ensure successful implementation.
Nwabiukwu said communication should start “as early as possible” and that who delivers the message is as important as the message itself.
“Sometimes you find that you get the best response when the communication is not so professionally delivered,” Nwabiukwu said, suggesting that beneficiaries of policies – even those “who are not very articulate” – may be more credible messengers than polished spokespeople.
He stressed the importance of building what he called a communication “foundation” before crises emerge.
“If you don’t have a foundation, all these things will not work,” Nwabiukwu said.
“The routine part of communication is 80 percent of it. You just keep building and building and building, so that when something goes wrong, you have something to work with.”
