A document written by Dr. Paschal Mihyo, Dr. Truphena Mukuna and Dr. Herman Musahara.
This paper assesses the legislative, representative, financial control and oversight roles played by parliaments in Africa, with Kenya as the main case study in a context of accountability. The regional focus includes all the countries of East Africa; and Tanzania, Uganda, Burundi and Rwanda for a more detailed regional overview.
The need to strengthen accountability is premised on the importance of having checks and mechanisms for parliaments to exercise their representative, legislative and oversight functions in a manner that ensures the prevention of abuse of power and subjects the Executive bodies to processes that open up their activities to public scrutiny with the possibility that in case they overstep their mandates they can be subjected to sanctions.
The paper examines gaps in accountability and the factors that sustain those gaps.
