Tobacco Control in Africa - TCA

$17,930 for the Cameroonian Coalition for Tobacco Control

Visiting the Bloomberg Initiative site, I found this grant allocated from February to August 2012 to "support adoption of the Cameroonian National Tobacco Control Bill and increase awareness of the FCTC among government officials, civil society organizations and the general public".

Why Transparency is important

Interesting post by David Roodman about how the UN is not transparent and why it should be. Amen.

 

Aid agencies limit their impact by refusing to fund the media

This excellent article by Prue Clarke, published in The Guardian was signaled by the Seattle based Humanosphere blog. Unfortunately the tobacco control grants awarded in Africa are a sad example of this lack of funding of local journalists to cover the key issues. After more than 5 years and millions of dollars, how many great articles, pictures, radio broadcasts or videos? Each project should have been, should be required to set aside funding for local journalists with a regular publishing schedule. They are key to raising the awareness and the visibility.