Tobacco Control in Africa - TCA

Is the Bloomberg Initiative-Campaign forTobacco-Free-Kids still funding projects in Africa?

According to their map of grants, as visited today, they are not. Or they just need to update the map? Or they don't care sharing this information any more? We asked them repeatedly about it. To no avail. Yet.

IDRC, the Access To Information Act and effective communication

The process to request information from IDRC is now clearly mentioned on their site. Requirements: being a Canadian citizen or a resident of Canada, pay a CAD 5 fee. Unfortunately none of the other big donors, Foundations, international institution like WHO or NGO is that transparent despite eventual claims that they are or want to be. Of course it would even be better if the information was readily available so one does not even have to ask for it. That would be proactive disclosure. Visiting the pages devoted to the Research in International Tobacco Control I was unable to find any precise information about the past and ongoing projects. Maybe they are still in the (very slow) process of transferring the info from their previous site. Still... with the staff they have it should not take that long. Why not one or several blogs? But that suggestion I already made 3 years ago... without success. Except for abruptly terminating my communication consulting contract. It remains a valid suggestion.

ATCA's commitment to transparency and accountability

ATCA's commitment to transparency and accountability is part of its constitution (pdf), starting with a mention in the section 4.6 devoted to Principles and Values (p.6): b) transparency c) accountability.
That translates into obligations that are detailed below.

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. 

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

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

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.

Transparency Officers to promote and implement transparency (and communication)

Because transparency needs to be a proactive process and will not happen without people in charge of making it happen. 

Source: opengov/ideascale via googling for transparency officer. 

The root of IDRC's "problem": the lack of transparency and what to do about it.

Why was Barbara McDougall's obvious conflict of interest not disclosed earlier? Because the information was voluntarily "omitted" then replaced by a vague formula by IDRC. The tobacco control community and the media should have been more vigilant, should have checked deeper than the official press releases that concealed a very inconvenient truth but first of all IDRC and the Canadian Government should have been fully transparent.

Aid agencies under pressure to prove how money is spent

A very interesting article from the Business Daily. I like the requirement (to come?) by DFID to allocate 10% of any budget to "outreach/communication" (on page 2). We formulated (to no effect yet) the same suggestion for the tobacco control grants.

Technology for Transparency Network

An interesting project of Global Voices. The technology to promote transparency in the way big and small Foundations and their grantees operate is readily available but they still prefer secrecy. Could the Technology for Transparency Network help promote better/best practices? I have asked them.

Not many speak their mind to Gates Foundation

This excellent article  is about the need for honest feedback but how difficult it is for the Gates Foundation to get it. It was written by Sandi Doughton and  was published on August 3 2008 in the Seattle Times: "The Gates Foundation says it wants to hear from its critics. But with so many in the global health world dependent on the foundation's cash, honest feedback is hard to come by."

2010. Who is going to monitor what's happening in tobacco control in Africa?

2010 just started.  Who is going to monitor what's happening in tobacco control in Africa? Who is going to keep asking for more information and transparency from the organizations and people who distribute and receive millions to promote this cause? Until now they have chosen to operate silently and secretly without providing any regular and substantial account of their activities (see our upcoming review of their very limited reporting on line). 
TCA is convinced that the requirements for transparency and accountability will sometimes become the norm but it will take many more people protesting and asking for those very basic and fundamental principles to be adopted and implemented.
As for now, the more it changes, the more the it remains the same.
Good luck and best wishes for a happy new year to all who share those ideals. 

Transparency and accountability: the key concept and practice of Proactive Disclosure

The Canadian Government introduced and started implementing in December 2003 the key concepts and practices of proactive disclosure. Here is an example of implementation for Health Canada: it includes travel and hospitality expenses (although usually only for a limited number of executives who are not the ones traveling most), contracts over $10,000.
How about incorporating such proactive disclosure into best practices to be implemented for the management of tobacco control grants?