Page 45 - OSISA Annual Report 2015-2018

the rest will be funded through the OSF Food Security Shared Framework (FSSF). There are five region-specific projects, and the countries covered in general are Angola, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia, Namibia, Swaziland, Tanzania and Zimbabwe. Factoring in anticipated Board approvals for this quarter; the Economic Justice Programme’s overall projected core budget spend will be 96,2%, while the FSSF budget spend will be at 91.8%. Key highlights of the Programme’s work for the past quarter are summarised below:
The Economic Justice Programme successfully convened from 6-8 August, representatives of OSISA, Economic Advancement Programme (EAP), Africa Regional Office (AfRO), Open Society Initiative of West Africa (OSIWA) and the Women’s Rights Programme (NY) to concretise and shape our joint strategy on the support to women informal cross border traders in southern Africa. The Maputo convening concluded that this work is growing and is likely to grow even more in the near future. The loose network has submitted a Reserve Fund application to support this work informed by a strategic document produced in Maputo. The abovementioned OSF entities will work together to support advocacy initiatives towards gender-responsive policies and legal frameworks and build the capacity of organisations, networks, movements
and formations that are emerging and leading efforts to promote women informal traders’ rights in the field. The network will invest in economic activities and increase the economic opportunities for women in the informal sector. Lastly, it will build women informal traders’ agency, voice, visibility and amplifying their voices in demanding their rights.
The EJ Programme, through the ESJC, has been leading the development of OSISA’s legal empowerment work. The work on legal empowerment has been identified as a priority area within OSF through the Global OSF Legal Empowerment Shared Framework. Within OSISA, we have developed an inter-cluster strategy where the ESJ and the Human Rights, Access to Justice and Rule of Law (HRAJRoL) Clusters commit to working together to support sustainable, systematic and holistic strategies focussing on legal empowerment of economic and social actors, groups and individuals in the region. The strategy will be realised initially through our own programme budgets. In the longer term and with funding from the reserve fund, we would deepen this collaborative work by strengthening partners’ work that speaks to the legal empowerment ethos we identify with. The strategic document was finalised in August and was submitted to the Executive Office for comments and endorsement.
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OPEN SOCIETY INITIATIVE FOR SOUTHERN AFRICA – 2018 REPORT
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