Two NGOs Launch Pan-African Initiative to Track COVID-19 Funds

Posted by Eric Ojo Featured, Latest Headlines, News, News Across Nigeria, News From The State Wednesday, November 11th, 2020

(AFRICAN EXAMINER) – Two frontline civic-tech Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), BudgIT Foundation and Connected Development (CODE), have jointly inaugurated a Pan-African Tracking System for all COVID-19 intervention funds in Africa.

Both NGOs are committed to spearheading the advocacy for openness, transparency and accountability in public finance in the continent. The newly inaugurated tracking system is aimed at ensuring proper management of COVID-19 funds.

Tagged, “COVID-19 Transparency and Accountability Project (CTAP)”, the initiative seeks to promote accountability and transparency through the tracking of COVID-19 intervention funds across 7 African countries, including Nigeria, Cameroun and Zimbabwe.

In addition, CODE and BudgIT will be leveraging their Tracka and Follow The Money platforms, as well as international chapters in other six focus African countries to activate a Pan-African tracking system for all COVID-19 funds in these countries.

BudgIT’s Director and Co-founder, OluseunOnigbinde said through engagement with and monitoring of COVID-19 funds, his organisation has discovered the extent of systemic profiteering inherent in the system.

“Retrospectively, our experience with tracking COVID-19 funds has shown a deeply rooted systemic profiteering culture, especially in an environment that lacks accountability and civic engagement.

“We also observed that there is an increasing mistrust from citizens on the delivery of palliative care in Nigeria, Kenya and Liberia due to representatives who abuse the process and the absence of comprehensive citizen data”, he said.

Similarly, CODE’s Founder and Chief Executive, HamzatLawal, noted that as nations of the world tackle the plague of coronavirus, with funding for African countries amassing in millions of dollars, it has become expedient to block financial leakages and ensure funds do not end up in personal pockets.

“With CTAP, BudgIT and CODE will advocate for accountability, transparency, and open governance while strengthening civic awareness and ensuring that targeted governments use COVID-19 intervention funds effectively. The project will address the threat of lack of accountability and the effects of COVID-19 on socio-economic development”, he added.

According to him, the response to pandemics should prioritize the participation of citizens, including needs assessments and provision of palliatives, procurement and delivery of items, thus, the primary aim of this project will be to drive citizens’ engagement as well as innovative capabilities of tech tools to develop an interactive portal on data relevant to COVID-19, and use these data to enable collaboration between citizen fact-checking programs and public institutions.

Beyond the engagement sessions with focus non-profits and frontline leaders, the project will also visualize and disseminate the contribution of stakeholders to the COVID-19 Relief Fund and other related programs.

More importantly, requests of citizens in vulnerable areas will be itemized while both organizations’ sms-to-web platform will be leveraged to deliver relevant data to the government and other stakeholders based on citizens’ requests. The project will also curate stories of COVID-19 case management, palliative measures and its impact on the citizens.

A statement jointly signed by BudgIT Communications Associate, Iyanu Fatoba and CODE’s Communications Director, Kevwe Oghide, further explained that both organizations are committed to working with relevant partners to understand the current transparency and accountability frameworks in focus countries and devise strategies that combine citizen tracking and advocacy for reforms.

“Both organizations will promote collaboration and learning among local partners so they can be more effective and share lessons about accessing data, mobilizing citizens, and engaging governments.

“Our plan is to strengthen existing tools and build new ones where necessary. These tools must match citizens’ needs in the current emergency response and use this platform as a means to drive accountability on the importance of optimising public resources in an emergency situation”, the statement stressed.

The statement also disclosed that the project will be supported by the Global Integrity who will design a learning framework that allows for rapid scale while initial funding is provided by Conrad N. Hilton Foundation and Skoll Foundation.