An open parliament is one that makes legislative work transparent, participatory, and accountable, fostering a two-way relationship between citizens and their representatives. Across Africa, advances towards parliamentary openness have been lauded as governance breakthroughs, but what difference have they made in practice?

Openness can sometimes be reduced to dashboards, consultations, and scorecards, prioritizing visibility over influence. The risk is that open parliament initiatives create the illusion of participation rather than meaningful change. Accountability emerges only when openness makes parliaments more responsive to their people and, by extension, executives more responsive to their parliaments.

This paper examines Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, and the Pan-African Parliament (PAP) to assess whether open parliament reforms have resulted in institutional uptake and shifts in power dynamics, and where they have fallen short.

Across cases, two conclusions stand out. Transparency has clearly expanded, and in some moments these tools have enabled civic actors to expose wrongdoing or shape reforms. At the same time, responsiveness is uneven, and executive dominance, partisan discipline, and structural exclusion continue to blunt accountability. Open parliament in Africa is less a finished reform than a contested process: progress is real but partial, and the challenge ahead is to link visibility to responsiveness so that citizens are not only seen and heard, but also heeded.