Latest Updates

Explore news, analysis and op-ed from PEMOs and their networks across the region

SADC

SADC is a regional inter-parliamentary body composed of fifteen parliaments in the SADC region.

Country Focus

Explore our SADC Country Profiles and latest reports from Country Parliamentary Monitoring Groups

Blog

Explore critical, timely analysis, op-ed, and reports from across the region

Events

Connect and collaborate with PEMOs across the region at events in person and online

Learning Hub

Our Learning Hub offers podcasts, recorded webinars, reports, and analysis from experts and practioners across the region

Our Vision

When Africa cast off the yoke of colonialism, she promised herself that the legislatures would also become “People’s Parliaments”. We hope to help make that a reality across Southern Africa.

Across the SADC region there are 16 countries with various political systems – from the continent’s last absolute monarchy in Eswatini to states reflecting their anglophone, lusophone and francophone colonial traces. Respectful of those various traditions, we seek to promote constructive collaborative relations between civil society structures and their national and subnational parliaments across the region to promote openness and inclusivity.

We envisage a region where those entrusted with leadership pay more than lip service to “an Africa of good governance, democracy, respect for human rights, justice and the rule of law” and remain responsible to the people who placed them in positions of responsibility.

We work towards a region where the principles of transparency, accountability and engagement with the citizenry are at the core of the work of the various legislative bodies.

We share APMON’s founding principles of transparency, accountability, and citizen engagement. We are dedicated to promoting constructive collaboration between civil society and with national and regional parliamentary structures across SADC to promote openness, inclusivity and civic engagement in decision-making

Our Values

Open House is committed to enhancing parliamentary transparency, accountability, and citizen inclusion in parliamentary work across the SADC region in concert with efforts on the continent. We do this by:

Encouraging citizen engagement with their national, subnational and regional parliaments;
Promoting access to parliaments and access to information on the work of those parliaments;
Encouraging critical self-evaluation and collaborative evaluation of Parliament’s fulfilment of its mandate;
Developing developing tools to evaluate parliamentary performance;
Monitoring parliament for anti-corruption reforms and the exercise of its oversight role in holding the Executive to account;
And facilitating peer learning among Parliamentary Engagement and Monitoring Organizations (PEMOs) to showcase best practices in parliamentary work and to contribute to the overall progress in transparency and openness among African parliaments.

Our Team

Open House is an initiative of the Parliamentary Monitoring Group (PMG) born out of nearly three decades of engagement with legislatures and the various stakeholders who care about those legislatures in South Africa. This initiative seeks to foster and strengthen collaboration between civil society and other structures with national parliaments across the SADC region and to build a community promoting best practices around openness and inclusivity.

We collaborate closely with the Southern African Council of NGOs (SAf-CNGO), the regional

umbrella body for national associations of nongovenmental organisations operating in the 16 countries of the SADC region.

Our Network

We are part of the Africa Parliamentary Monitoring Organisations Network (APMON) which is a continental network of non-governmental organisations and coalitions of civil society organisations that monitor the work of and who regularly engage national, subnational and regional parliaments across Africa.

We are inspired by the founding principles of transparency, accountability and citizen engagement contained in the South African Constitution and which form the bedrock of the open democracy we actively promote. Africa promised herself that by throwing off the yoke of colonialism, its legislatures would also become “People’s Parliaments”. We hope to help make that a reality.

Latest Blog Updates

Ivory Coast bars Laurent Gbagbo and key opposition leader from presidential race

Namibia and Zambia are set to make cross-border travel between their countries easier by allowing citizens to use...

Annie Kirke

17 Sep 2025

Blog, Elections, Ivory Coast

Malawi: A Battle of Former Presidents as Citizens Seek Path to Reform

Namibia and Zambia are set to make cross-border travel between their countries easier by allowing citizens to use...

Annie Kirke

17 Sep 2025

Blog, Elections, Malawi

Op-Ed: What the World Needs to Know About Malawi’s 2025 Elections

The upcoming general elections in the Republic of Malawi, scheduled for September 2025, have garnered significant interest among...

Annie Kirke

17 Sep 2025

Blog, Elections, Malawi

SADC

The Southern African Development Community Parliamentary Forum (SADC PF) was established in 1997 in accordance with Article 9 (2) of the SADC Treaty as an autonomous institution of SADC It is a regional inter-parliamentary body composed of fifteen (15) parliaments representing over 3500 parliamentarians in the SADC region.

These member parliaments are Angola, Botswana, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Seychelles, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe.