The Africa4All project will provide the participating African countries of Kenya, Lesotho, Namibia, Tanzania and Uganda with an ICT solution that will enable citizens and politicians to better appreciate the impact of legislation, making the complex political debate meaningful and interesting for all citizens.

The overall objective of the Africa4All project is to support the goals of the @CP-ICT Programme as they relate to helping ACP governments build sustainable capacity to adapt and implement international good practice in leveraging ICT in Parliaments of ACP States.

The specific objectives of the project are:

1. To introduce and test an innovative eParliament framework leveraging Web 2.0 technologies as a pilot in Kenya, Namibia, Tanzania, Uganda and Lesotho
2. To educate MPs, Parliamentary ICT staff and citizens to leverage technology to support collaboration and active engagement in decision making processes in society
3. To identify the challenges and barriers from the introduction of ICT in everyday functioning of Parliaments
4. To leverage project results, experiences and lessons learnt from the five trials to promote wider ICT adoption in ACP State Parliaments, but with a particular focus during the project duration on engagement with other East African and Southern African countries
5. To contribute to the bridging the digital divide, enhancing the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) as key enablers for poverty reduction

The groups/entities that will be directly positively affected by the project are – but not limited to – the following:

• MPs and Parliamentary ICT staff from Parliaments of Kenya, Namibia, Tanzania, Uganda and Lesotho
• Citizens, NGOs, businesses and other entities from Kenya, Namibia, Tanzania, Uganda and Lesotho as potential users of the application or participants in the awareness raising events and training
• International organizations that work in Africa and media from Kenya, Namibia, Tanzania, Uganda and Lesotho as potential contributors in the dissemination of the results and the identification of synergies for the second phase of implementation
• Other Parliaments in East Africa and Southern Africa as potential users of the applications in a second phase

The Africa4all application will be created in two subsequent versions. The features of the platform could be as follows:

• User registration tool – This allows users to register so they can gain access to the portal’s information and tools, as well as to create their own profile that can be seen by other portal users
• Member Directory – Registered users can view the profiles of other members on the portal
• Group tool – Registered users are able to join or create their own group. It includes e-mail lists for distribution of messages between the members of a group and an archive of past messages and message attachments
• Forum Discussions – This tool allows users to establish threaded forum discussions and share expertise with other portal users. The Discussion boards will be on topics related to mental health issues proposed by young people or created by their elected representatives
• My Agora – Creation and management of participative processes on topics related to current policies and also proposals for policies and action plans in the mental health area at national/regional levels, which can have associated documents, links, and forums for debates, as well as questionnaires and a calendar of events related to the participative processes. The documents linked with each participative process could be:
  • The implementation of the laws that are already in force
  • Draft laws, draft action plans
• Online petitions tool – With this tool registered users can create their own petitions and join others that are published on the platform. When a petition has a certain quantity of signatures it will be sent to their corresponding elected representatives automatically
• Letter to Officials tool - This allows registered users to send letters to national, regional and local level officials, as well as to read letters that have been sent by other users and the responses to such by the officials
• Blog space – This can be used for the publication of legislative events and other news that the Parliaments want to disseminate to the public and where the public can add comments to each blog post
• A survey tool – This will be used for publishing online questionnaires to request citizens’ views on specific issues related to the project, or related to a specific participative process (debate about proposal of law or plan of action) and also to measure the users’ satisfaction and the impact of the trail on the users
• Calendar of events – To show events in each country related to legislative process
• Comment form – To send comments, complaints and suggestions related to the platform
• Visualizations tools - To descramble the perspective of the public on the legislative process
• FAQ about the platform with answers
• A guide for users on how to use the platform, including Terms and Conditions for using the platform
• Statistics (members online, guests online, total members)
• A search engine - to search the site for information. The Advanced Search option allows users to refine their search parameters
• Online newsletter- in case that the parliaments will want to publish periodic newsletters about their activity for example