International IDEA and the Ghana Center for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana), its regional partner in Anglophone West Africa, held a national dialogue workshop on political parties in Accra, Ghana, on 16 February, with all political parties in the country, to discuss data collection on external regulation and internal functioning of political parties in Ghana.
The workshop focused on:
- Public funding of political parties,
- Quotas to increase political participation and representation for women,
- Conditions for smaller, emerging political parties,
- Parties relations with civil society and grassroots and
- Training and capacity building of political parties.
The Institute of Economic Affairs in Ghana, the Electoral Commission of Ghana, the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI), the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, members of the diplomatic community, and broad representation from media and civil society organizations in Ghana were among the participants.
IDEA’s regional partner in Francophone West Africa, Centre for Democratic Governance (CGD), was represented in Accra by its Director, professor Augustin Loada, who provided a comparative perspective from the earlier dialogue workshops.
This workshop is the third in a series: a Burkina Faso workshop took place in November 2004, and a Senegal one in January 2005. Two more workshops are planned in Mali in April 2005 and Nigeria in May 2005, to be followed by a regional West Africa workshop in June 2005. The series of workshops on political parties is part of a wider IDEA research and dialogue initiative on political parties.
