Leaders of civil society from around Africa will hold two meetings in Bamako, Mali from September 3-6 aimed at strengthening their network around the continent and elaborating a strategy for advancing democracy in Africa. The first meeting, from September 3-4 will bring together members of the Management Committee of World Movement for Democracy's Africa Democracy Forum. The Forum consists of over 200 democracy activists from all parts of Africa. It is coordinated by the National Endowment for Democracy and is a part of the World Movement for Democracy.

On September 5-6 a second meeting, the Bamako Roundtable on Democracy in Africa, will bring together representatives from the Africa Democracy Forum and other leading democracy advocates. They will be joined by the leadership of the non-governmental Secretariat of the Community of Democracies, a coalition of ten leading Malian NGOs working to help organize the Fourth Ministerial of the Community of Democracies (CD) in 2007. The Roundtable is organized by the Washington-based nonprofit organization, the Council for a Community of Democracies under a grant from the National Endowment for Democracy. Also participating are three African members of the nongovernmental International Steering Committee, the civil society governing body of the CD.

During the two days African leaders of civil society from South Africa, Kenya, Cameroon, Nigeria, Senegal, the Gambia, and Ghana will be interact with representatives of a number of democracy promotion organizations including the British Westminster Democracy Foundation, the Netherlands Institute for Multi-Party Democracy (IMD), the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE), the International Federation for Electoral Systems (IFES), the National Democratic Institute (NDI), the International Republican Institute (IRI) and the Budapest-based International Centre for Democratic Transition (ICDT).

The purpose of the Roundtable will be to assess the problems of democracy in Africa and propose concrete solutions for actions by governments, donor organizations and multilateral organizations. Roundtable recommendations will be addressed to the governments of the Community of Democracies whose Foreign Ministers will next meet in Bamako in the fall of 2007. The Community of Democracies is a movement launched in Warsaw in 2000 by the Ministers of more than 100 democracies the goal of which is to promote, foster and consolidate democracy around the world and increase cooperation among democratic nations. The Community of Democracies is marked by its partnership between governments and civil society.

In Bamako, the scene will be set for Roundtable participants by a Ghana-based representative of the Afrobarometer, a network that conducts public opinion surveys. The Afrobarometer representative will apprise participants of the attitudes of African publics toward democracy. Later on they will hear from a panel of women leaders on the state of gender equality on the continent and how to improve it.

A central theme of the Bamako Community of Democracies Conference will be the issue of "democracy, development and poverty". That subject will be explored by a panel headed by Paul Graham, Director of South Africa's leading democracy NGO, IDASA and Dr. Oumar Makalou, a former Malian senior official of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), currently President of the CD nongovernmental Secretariat located in Bamako.

Other topics to be examined by the Roundtable include strengthening the rule of law, press freedom, the role of political parties, improving electoral standards, and free enterprise and democracy. Participants will also hear from Ambassador Istvan Gyarmati, Director of the International Centre for Democratic Transition in Budapest, Hungary who will discuss the capacity of his center to provide assistance to democracies in transition and seek ideas on potential projects.

Participants will also consider constraints placed on non-governmental organizations in Africa by governments and especially the restrictive laws adopted by countries such as Zimbabwe to ban links between NGOs and outside organizations. Also, they will have an opportunity to discuss recent developments at the United Nations including the activities of the U.N. Democracy Caucus established last year to engender cooperation among democracies in the international body. And finally, the Roundtable will consider proposals for determining which countries meet the democratic criteria for invitation to the next Community of Democracies Ministerials and make recommendations on the invitation process.