Wishes for 2012: Transparency, Accountability and Farewell to all.

After 5 years of advocating for transparency in tobacco control in Africa, from January 2007 to December 2011, I have to admit my efforts have failed. For 2012 and the years to come I can only wish that the very basic requirements for transparency and accountability that I summarized in a transparency scorecard start being implemented by all the organizations involved in promoting tobacco control in Africa.

As long as a thick veil of secrecy (and fear) will cover the way the millions allocated by the Bloomberg Initiative and the Gates Foundation are used, there will be little hope for really effective programs. This lesson should have been learned with the way the IDRC-ATSA program was managed but nothing changed.

The American Cancer Society and the World Health Organization that are in charge of managing two significant grants awarded by the Gates Foundation are even less transparent than IDRC as they are not submitted to any Access to Information procedure and they don't proactively share any substantial financial data.
The donors themselves, Bloomberg Philanthropies and the Gates Foundation don't share such information. In that context, repeated calls for honest feedback will continue to be ignored.

After 5 years of advocacy and almost 1.000 posts it is time for me to accept defeat and move on.

The people and organizations I kept monitoring and asking for precisions from will probably be relieved. There is certainly a feeling of sadness and some bitterness on my part at accepting defeat but that's the reality. All the arguments for a real change will remain available on line as the blogs will remain accessible as well as the book Honest Feedback, but there will be no more update as of today.

Farewell to all,

Philippe Boucher

PS: the comments will no longer be published (no time for such maintenance). If you need/want to contact me write to philippeboucher2 at gmail.com.