Beyond representation: Building trust through direct citizen engagement

I have been watching Severance (the TV series), and though it has a fictional setting, the idea behind it resonates deeply with the work we do in citizen engagement.

If you haven’t seen it, imagine a workplace where employees have no memory of their outside lives—which honestly sounds like a useful feature when dealing with long, drawn-out Zoom meetings.

One quote from the show stood out to me: "If you are a soldier, do not fight for my freedom. Fight for the freedom of the soldier fighting next to you. This will make the war more inspiring for you both."

Too often, we see well-meaning efforts to advocate for citizen agency that unintentionally keep citizens at arm’s length.

Reports are written, policies proposed, and programs designed to “help” communities—but the real test of this work is whether citizens themselves are at the heart of these efforts, shaping their own futures.

Kenya will this week host the 2025 OGP Africa and the Middle East Regional Meeting in Nairobi from March 25-27, 2025.

President William Ruto is set to launch the event which aims to explore how open government approaches can be leveraged to bolster trust and strengthen the social contract between governments and their citizens.

This reflection is especially relevant as we head into the OGP Africa and Middle East Regional Meeting, where the theme, Rebuilding Trust through Open Government, calls for a shift in how we approach citizen participation.

Trust is not built through distant advocacy but through direct engagement, co-creation, and shared ownership of governance.

If we truly want to rebuild trust between governments and citizens, we must stop seeing citizens as passive recipients of change and start seeing them as the architects of their own governance structures.

Real citizen agency doesn’t come from grand policy declarations or high-level discussions—it happens in the moments when people feel they have a say in decisions that affect them.

It’s in the informal gatherings where concerns are voiced, the local problem-solving sessions where solutions emerge, and the everyday interactions where trust is either built or eroded.

We’ve seen time and again that when citizens are treated as equal partners rather than distant beneficiaries, real change happens.

A community that co-creates solutions will fight to sustain them; a government that listens will earn trust and a process that evolves based on citizen feedback will remain relevant.

If we want to move beyond symbolic inclusion, we must be willing to engage at the level where real life unfolds—where policies meet practice, and where citizens are more than just an audience but active architects of their own futures.

At the end of the day, real citizen agency means standing shoulder to shoulder with communities, not just fighting on their behalf.

It means ensuring that every citizen—whether in a rural village, an informal settlement, or a formal institution—has the knowledge, confidence, and opportunity to shape the policies and decisions that affect their lives.

This shift from advocacy for citizens to advocacy with citizens is what will make this movement not just more effective, but also more inspiring for all involved.

As we gather for the OGP Africa and Middle East Regional Meeting, let this be our guiding principle: Rebuilding trust requires not just open government policies, but open collaboration with the very people those policies aim to serve.

Josiah Wandera is an Assistant Program Officer at Twaweza East Africa