Social accountability is one of the forms of accountability resulting from the activities of citizens and civil society organizations (CSOs) to hold government agencies accountable. The World Bank was the first to use the term “social accountability” (SA) to describe a set of procedures and mechanisms that enable citizens, civil society, and mass media to hold the government and public sector officials accountable. The term also represents the procedures adopted by the government, CSOs, mass media, and other social stakeholders to promote or facilitate such efforts. Therefore, SA is a form of social participation that transforms communities from being service receivers to a key partner throughout all stages, including needs assessment, pre-planning of activities, monitoring of service delivery, up to evaluation and improvement.

Social accountability aims at enabling stakeholders to access the best services. As such, it relies on mechanisms for giving voice and participation. Over the past decade there were many examples that revealed that citizens could express their viewpoints and actively participate in urging the public sector to be more responsive and accountable.