Tobacco Control in Africa - TCA

ACBF funding from the Gates Foundation: $14 million + (November 12 2018)

I had missed this info I just found on the Gates Foundation site (copy below). Those links are now (2021) useless. See below for the info.

Also see this ACBF video on Youtube (lots of blah, blah, no details)

Revisiting the Gates Foundation's pages devoted to tobacco control

While the Gates Foundation has invested millions of dollars since 2008 to promote tobacco control I could find only 3 press releases, the most recent one on April 12, 2010. How is that for transparency or rather lack of, quasi-total opacity? There is no global report available that would detail what/who has been funded and with what results during all those years. Googling a bit more, I found a 2014 press release of November 19, 2014 posted on the ACBF site (see below). Anything else?

Projects presently funded by CTFK in Africa: only one left (as of now) in 2019? ACBF now the main source?

Go and visit the database of grants awarded by CTFK. I found only a project in Chad.

Maybe/probably most of the grants are now awarded by the African Capacity Building Foundation, as presented in this September 2018 video? Zero detailed information about the amounts involved and the projects themselves. At the very end they say they intend to fund more projects in more countries but that's all. The ACBF provided us  with 4 pdf documents you can access via the urls below:

document 1 , document 2 , document 3, document 4

ACBF and Gates Foundation's partners in Abuja for coordination meeting

Find below the info posted on the ACBF website about this meeting.

ACBF and Gates Foundation's partners in Abuja for coordination meeting

Find below the info posted on the ACBF website about this meeting.

Who is going to travel to Harare, how much is it going to cost, for what benefit?

This info found on the site of the ACBF: another 5 day workshop to supposedly train people who are already (or should be) seasoned advocates. We have denounced from the very start how travel and hospitality expenses were totally out of control as far as the Gates Foundation projects in Africa were concerned. At the age of internet and skype (now owned by Microsoft), plenty of money continues to be spent on wasteful and useless 'workshops'. When will they learn? I fear never.

Tobacco Control Advocacy and Leadership training for CSOs
Harare, Zimbabwe
29 Aug 2016
02 Sep 2016
This is an annual Coordination event held for ACBF supported sub-grantees. This year’s workshop aims to enhance understanding and impart skills in advocacy and leadership for Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) to be able to advocate for the passage of Tobacco Control (TC) Bill and effective implementation of TC laws in the respective target countries. The workshop will be jointly conducted with Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids (CTFK). CSOs supported by CTFK will also participate in this workshop.

Role of ACBF

The African Capacity Building Foundation with support from Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is supporting Civil Society Organizations in 4 various countries:
1. Centre for Tobacco Control in Africa (CTCA) in Uganda,
2. University of Cape Town, Economics for Tobacco Control Project South Africa,
3. African Tobacco Control Alliance (ATCA) in Togo, and
4. Ministry of Health in Senegal to support tobacco control.

The 9 Civil Society Organisations being supported include:

Association Mauritanienne de Lutte contre la Tuberculose et le SIDA (AMALUTS)- Mauritania
Initiative Pour L’Education Et le Controle du Tabagisme (IECT)-Benin
Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC)-Nigeria
African Network for Information and Action Against Drugs (RAID)-Gambia
Mouvement Populaire Pour la sante au Gabon (MPS)-Gabon
International Institute for Legislative Affairs (IILA)-Kenya
Parliamentary Forum on Non Communicable Diseases (PFNCD)-Uganda
Association PREVENIR-Senegal
Mathiwos Wondu -YeEthiopia Cancer Society (MWECS)-Ethiopia

Of the above 9 CSOs target countries, five of them have tobacco control laws passed and are currently implementing the TC laws, the countries include: Senegal, Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda and Gabon. The other four countries are working on the passage of FCTC compliant tobacco controls Bills, of which TAPS and Plain Packaging is part of WHO FCTC compliant law.

The first official press release about the meeting in Harare

What do you learn from this press release? Anything specific? Anything new? The participants, although no detail is provided about them by Dr Thomas Munthali, are probably tobacco control veterans, with years of activism and funding. Maybe ulterior press releases will tell us a bit more about this meeting and how the Gates Foundation millions are used? Maybe not.

The more things change: Annual coordination workshop for ACBF's sub-grantees in Harare, September 28 - October 2

Is it really necessary and useful to move all those people to Harare? What's the cost of such an "annual coordination workshop"? The "rationale"? The workshop aims to equip the sub-grantees with knowledge and skills in ACBF procedures for effective and efficient grant utilization and management. Funded by the Bill & Melinda  Gates Foundation, the tobacco control project advances evidence-based tobacco control policies in Africa.

A grant of US$ 8,540.407 to the African Capacity Building Foundation

As we kept looking for more details about the $32 million grant awarded by the Gates Foundation, we found out the amount awarded to ACBF at the end of text posted on their website under the title Why Africa needs antitobacco interventions, dated June 1, 2015: $8.5+ million. It does not specify what are the 'target countries' nor how the global amount is divided among the programs nor how much goes to its administration.

The opaque transparency of the Gates Foundation

Revisiting the website of the ACBF we discover this press release from the Gates Foundation dated November 19, 2014 announcing continued support for tobacco control in Africa. BUT, while this text lists the organizations the Foundation is partnering with, it does not provide any $ figure about the budgets awarded to each of them. At the same time, Cynthia Lewis writes:
You asked for more transparency in grant making, better role clarity and coordination among partners and grant makers, and direct investment in a strategic African organization that can help build capacity.
The problem (as we see it) is that she does not provide any detailed information besides the names of the 'intermediaries". Visiting, for instance, the CTFK site we were unable (as of today) to find any reference to a grant awarded in 2015 to an African country. As for the grant awarded to ACBF, we don't know it's size nor is there much detail about how it is going.

(After some more investigating we found that the ABCF grant seems to be for $8.5M, while the grant for surveys by the CDC Foundation would be $4.6M: that still leaves $18.5M unaccounted for -how much for CTFK? how much for WHO?- and there is very little detail about how all those amounts are going to be used. We should not have to go looking : why isn't all the info given upfront? That would be real transparency).

Cynthia also mentions that: As you know, we are also supporting some social marketing and behavior change work against tobacco use in Africa as a complement to important and ongoing policy work.
Well, we don't know about that. What is it about?

CTCA Phase 2 (2015 -2017): 5 target countries

Details here

$32 million to implement tobacco control programs

The press release posted on the ACBF website is below. Details remain very sketchy on how this budget will be managed. There is reference to a communiqué by the Gates Foundation but we were unable to find it. 12 countries appear to have been selected for funding. What about the rest? How much information will be made public? The the three year and $32 million grant was announced in July 2014 on the ACBF site. ACBF nor the Gates Foundation answered our requests for more details.

ACBF & Gates Foundation partners lay groundwork for next phase of tobacco control  

       

Harare, Zimbabwe

25 Nov, 2014

The African Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF), the World Health Organization (WHO) and Campaign for Tobacco Free kids (CTFK) are advancing coordination of the Tobacco Control Project across Africa funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The three Gates Foundation partners met from the 24^th-25^th of November and agreed that coordination and effective implementation of tobacco control will take a prominent place in the second phase of the project.

During the two day sessions, the partners agreed on an effective mechanism for work at country level, developed a joint reporting tool and agreed to develop a monthly calendar of key activities as well as to hold regular calls to discuss their plans and progress at country and regional levels.  

The meeting served as a platform for the partners to gain a better appreciation of each organization's role in tobacco control; share work plans and deliverables as well as priority countries of focus and partners at country and regional levels.

ACBF, as the host of the first coordination meeting, recommended that the partners build their relationship for tobacco control based on trust, transparency and communication. They were also encouraged to build on each other’s comparative advantage and competence. These outcomes will ensure coordination for effective implementation of tobacco control in Africa by avoiding duplication of activities and mismanagement of resources.

Last week, the Gates Foundation officially released a communiqué announcing their commitment of more than US $32 million to support governments and Civil Society Organizations to implement tobacco control policies and programs in order to reduce tobacco use.

Under this funding, ACBF will support strategic grant-making and capacity building of the Centre for Tobacco Control in Africa,  the University of Cape Town and Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) to advance evidence-based Tobacco Control policies in Africa including tobacco taxation, advertising bans, graphic warning labels, and smoke-free environments. The CSOs will be drawn from Uganda, Kenya, Mauritania, Botswana, Ethiopia, Senegal, Nigeria, and Ghana, Niger, Benin, Gabon and the Gambia.

That's five "big' countries (Nigeria, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Ghana), two 'medium" Niger and Senegal, 5 small (Mauritania, Botswana, Benin, Gabon).

Representing ACBF were Bakary Kone and Patience Jambaya (as seen on the pictures)

 

November 24-25: Coordination for effective Tobacco Control in Africa, in Harare.

I found this by chance while doublechecking the information provided on the Gates Foundation site. There is still no mention of the amount of the grant awarded to the ABCF which is strange as usually (apparently) they disclose the amount involved. It was on the site of ABCF. Is this meeting really necessary? How transparent is it going to be? How much will it cost? For what results? What do all the other local/national advocates really think? What chance do they have to be heard? Who is in charge of the project at ABCF?

November 24- 25     

Coordination for effective Tobacco Control in Africa 

Harare, Zimbabwe

The tobacco control partner coordination meeting will be held in Harare at the African Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF) secretariat on 24th to 25th November 2014. Three institutions namely; ACBF, WHO (AFRO and Headquarters) and the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids (CTFK) will meet to discuss how to improve coordination for Tobacco Control in Africa under the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funding for Africa.

What's left of the promotion of tobacco control in Africa by The Gates Foundation? Not much

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...

CTCA: What's next?

What's the relationship between CTCA and ABCF going to be? The respective leaders met in August in Kampala. What's next? What about the other organizations/groups that used to be funded by the Gates Foundation?

African Capacity Building Foundation chosen by the Gates Foundation

'The Harare based African Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF) recently entered into a strategic partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation through which ACBF will advance evidence-based tobacco control policy in Africa through support to African civil organizations (CSOs). ACBF will serve as a strategic grant maker, capacity builder, and effectively coordinate with others working in tobacco control on the continent. The deliverables of the Foundation under this assignment include grant making and capacity building of the Centre for Tobacco Control in Africa (CTCA), a regional center of excellence in tobacco control based in Kampala, Uganda and to civil service organizations operating in the tobacco control sector in Africa." They are looking for a 'Consultant Program Officer' and an administrative assistant.
The deadline to submit an application is July 27. I have not yet found information about the budget awarded by the Gates Foundation.
While researching for this post I found this very interesting interview of Frannie Léautier who used to be ACBF's Executive Secretary, about evaluation and monitoring results. Since December 2013 ACBF's Executive Secretary is Emmanuel Nnadozie.