Tobacco Control in Africa - TCA

Who's Who? The staff of the African Tobacco Control Consortium

The ATCC site lists the staff positions but does not provide the names or short bios of the persons in charge. Find below our attempt at more transparency by providing you with this information collected thanks to Google and various sources (like Linkedin).

IDRC: Accountability Tools for Policy Research

IDRC has funded this interesting project by One World Trust. It is about improving accountability and transparency. How much or how little IDRC implements those goals is debatable. 

Indicators for a transparent management scorecard

Following up on the need for more transparency (and accountability) that has been at the core of this blog, I have listed 10 indicators that I believe would be helpful to assess how organizations are performing. Here they are:

1. Names, bios of the staff and contact email (program, project managers, all staff involved)
2. Detailed annual report explaining the activities
3. Detailed annual operational budget (easy to find and providing key info, see below)
4. Budget for staff and consultants (staff administrative costs)
5. Budget for travel and hospitality (including monthly update and yearly detailed list)
6. Transparency blog providing regular detailed information about the progress of each program/project/grant
7. Open selection process for grant applications (all applications available)
8. Transparency requirement for grantees and sub-grantees (including the 7 first items of this scorecard)
9. Establishment of a benchmark scorecard (baseline) for the project, updated yearly to allow evaluation
10. Willingness to answer questions and provide information (for big institutions, Access to Information person and procedure)

What do you think the score is for each organization involved in promoting tobacco control in Africa?

 

Scorecards and the importance of counting for transparency, accountability, fairness and effectiveness: tools for the Gates Foundation?

The governance and development blog of the Worldbank refers in this post to this very interesting document  (pdf) about the importance of counting and budget transparency, something that does not apply to tobacco control grants to Sub-Sahara Africa.

World Health Organization accountability profile as assessed by One World Trust in 2006

What has changed since this 2006 report?
Source: One World Trust

Johannesburg's meeting: Day 3 in the ACS blog

Here is the post about the last day of the Johannesburg's meeting. Was anything concrete and specific decided? We could not tell. Can you? The taboo question we cannot resist to ask, is: How much did that cost?

Does Gates funding of media taint objectivity?

That's the title of this article in the Seattle Times by Sandi Daughton and Kristi Heim. What do you think?

Day 2 of the ATSA meeting in Johannesburg - on Cancerblogs

This post on Cancerblogs presents Day 2 of the ATSA meeting.

Day 1 of the ATSA meeting in Johannesburg - on the ATCC site

A summary of the first day of the ATSA meeting on the ATCC site.

Day 1 of the ATSA meeting in Johannesburg - on Cancerblogs

The blog of the ACS has this post of the first day of the ATSA meeting. 

NGOs and the party line

NGOs are funny and sometimes a bit schizophrenic: for as much rhetoric (and maybe even actual practice)around valuing diverse input, free market place of ideas, and so on *in the context of communities where we work*, in my experience they are (typically) incredibly *in*tolerant of diverse opinion internally. If you don’t toe the party line of your employing NGO’s paradigm on… whatever, or if you simply express an opinion contrary to the happy in-house propaganda, you can be in for a world of hurt.

Source: Free the Aid Bloggers

A special grant from the Gates Foundation funded the meeting in Johannesburg

There is no mention of the amount of the grant, nor is it posted (at this time) on the Gates Foundation website where the last tobacco control grant mentioned is about a conference financed in Oakland. The first grant allocated in the program, in 2007, was for a conference in Oxford.

Source: January 2011 issue of the African Consortium's Newlsetter.

The program of the ATSA meeting in Johannesburg (February 1-3 2011)

Read the program (Google doc.)

African Tobacco Control Consortium: The January 2011 Newsletter

The January 2011 Newsletter is now available. It announces the 4 projects awarded "small" grants (from Algeria, Bénin, Botswana and Zambia), the organization of the big ATSA meeting in Johannesburg in early February and the names of the members of a committee of researchers.

Fraud at the Global Health Fund to fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria

Cases of fraud are being investigated at the Global Health Fund to fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Several African countries appear implicated. There is criticism about the overreliance on grant recipients to assess their own performance. The audits are conducted by John Parsons the Global Fund's Inspector General.

Gates Foundation: Guide to Actionable Measurement. How to evaluate progress?

The Guide to Actionable Measurement (pdf) is a document published by the Gates Foundation about how they try to evalate their grantee's work. Does it apply to the tobacco control program for Africa?

Bill Gates Sr about the importance of admitting failure

"Live and learn" is a familiar saying, but its importance stems largely from what goes unmentioned: failure.'

In fact, the primary use of this saying is to acknowledge that everyone makes mistakes and encounters failure. The important thing is to learn and improve from these experiences. Indeed, learning and failing are both lifelong experiences. But whereas most institutions and individuals strive to be continuous learners, they strive equally hard to avoid failure and rarely acknowledge when it occurs.

This approach is wrong and problematic. The lessons learned from failure and mistakes are often the most important, and they commonly have relevance and value to others.

Where does the tobacco control community stand now about IDRC?

One year ago it looked like IDRC was under a boycott because of the presence at its helm of Barbara McDougall  a former Imperial Tobacco Director. One year later the World Health Organization and the American Cancer Society organize in Johannesburg a meeting to praise IDRC's work. What gives?  Has the conflict of interest that was seemed so shocking disappeared? Is an 11 months suspension an adequate sentence and is IDRC now to be reintegrated fully within the tobacco control community? What independent evaluation has been done and published to explain how IDRC has used the Gates Foundation money? Is IDRC now an acceptable partner to promote tobacco control?

Pablo Eisenberg about the unintended consequences of philanthrocapitalism

In this interesting opinion Pablo Eisenberg lists a few problems with the philanthrocapitalism approach.

ACS, WHO to hold ATSA consultation meeting in Johannesburg on February 3d : is Barbara McDougall invited?

All is well again with IDRC as ACS and WHO embrace the ATSA work and effectively forgive the McDougall story. Meanwhile the "independent" evaluation of the ATSA program is still not public. Is Barbara McDougall going to attend this meeting? What a short memory. Is such a change of attitude acceptable? What do you think?

This announcement was posted on the site of the African Consortium.

African Tobacco Control Consortium Newsletter

The ATCC has published its first newsletter since its creation. It is a short document that repeats the main objectives of the Consortium but does not provide any substantial new information.

Who runs the organization? How are the decisions taken? Who are the 11 staff members? How is this $7 million budget (awarded by the Gates Foundation in November 2009) managed? Who are the recipients of the first grants since the first round was closed 5 months ago in August? Who are the members of the "selection committee" for those grants? How transparent and accountable is the Consortium going to be? Has an independent evaluator been appointed? Those are but a few of the questions that remain -for now- unanswered.

IDRC: What happened to the database developed by the American Cancer Society?

Under the name "Coordination Support for International Tobacco Control Funder's Forum" IDRC provided CAD 14.420 to the American Cancer Society to compile a database of the projects funded to promote tobacco control in low and middle income countries. The one year project starting date was in September 2008 but it lasted until February 2010.

What happened to this database? Who can access it?

South Africa: National Council Against Smoking awarded two grants by the Bloomberg Initiative

The National Council Against Smoking in South Africa has been awarded in May 2010 two 2 year grants (May 2010 to April 2012) by the Bloomberg Initiative for total of $495.722. They aim to promote "policy advocacy for effective tobacco tax and regulatory regimes".

Source: Bloomberg Initiative/What we fund

UICC World Conference in China: A session sponsored by ACS about tobacco control in Sub-Sahara Africa

Visiting the blog of the American Cancer Society we discover this information. 

The controversy over the Social Innovation grants brings more transparency

Read the story in the Chronicle of Philanthropy and also this opinion piece. What lessons (if any) for the ways tobacco control grants are managed? In this case all the applications and their reviews are going to be made public. One wishes the same could be true as far as the tobacco control grants are concerned.

"Open grantmaking" in Washington DC

Interesting initiatives to make the grant making process more transparent. A process to emulate in the tobacco control field.

Source: Chronicle of Philanthropy

The giving pledge: billionaires who pledge to give

Look at the list of billionaires who have taken the pledge and read the letters explaining their choices. Also worth reading Pablo Eisenberg's comment about how foundations must change and commit to public accountability and transparency.

Sources: Chronicle of Philanthropy and Tactical Philanthropy Blog.