Visiting the site of the ACBF (African Capacity Building Foundation) that was awarded a 3 year grant (amount not available) one can see that the scope of the interventions has been drastically reduced, focusing on the CTCA and the University of Cape Town. Only six countries are 'targeted': Botswana, Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal and Uganda. 0 information about this grant is available on the site of the Gates Foundation (that I could find). The more it changes... It's sad to see such a waste.
The prospects don't look much better from the Bloomberg Initiative/CTFK where I have not seen any new grant recently awarded. When there is no clear strategy and no real leadership...
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
Center for Tobacco Control in Africa (CTCA)
On 24 July 2014, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation approved a three year grant for the African Capacity Building Foundation to support strategic grant making and capacity building of civil society organizations (CSOs) advancing tobacco control in Africa. The grant will be used to strategically support the formulation and implementation of effective tobacco control policies including tobacco taxation, advertising bans, graphic warning labels, and smoke-free environments. ACBF’s approach will include strategic grant making to, and capacity building of, the Center for Tobacco Control in Africa (CTCA) based at the Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda; the Economics of Tobacco Control Project of the University of Cape Town, South Africa; and selected CSOs in target countries.
CTCA focuses on building minimal Tobacco Control capacity in governments in terms of training of personnel, funds and institutional mechanism to reverse the growing epidemic in the Africa region, and especially to address lack of appropriate policies and inadequate attention paid to some key articles of the FCTC such as Article 15 on Illicit Trade and Article 17 on Alternative Livelihood.
UCT will increase the capacity of its researchers to provide high quality technical assistance on tobacco taxation to government and civil society partners in sub-Saharan Africa. CSOs will advocate for the implementation of the FCTC, depending on the level of FCTC implementation in their respective focus countries.
CSOs will be selected in the six priority countries, namely Botswana, Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal and Uganda.
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