Tobacco Control in Africa - TCA

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?

Who attended COP8 in Geneva? At what cost? Does anybody care?

Want to know who represented your country during the COP8 meetings in Geneva? Have a look at the list. Maybe you'll be surprised by the size of some delegations, wondering what the cost has been in travel and hospitality. A few examples below. Some do live in Geneva as they work for the Permanent Mission there but not all. Are so many delegates really necessary? Were there more than 130 people representing FCA?(pages 36, 37) as "observers'?

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.

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.

Susan Desmond-Hellman: The Gates Foundation needs more transparency

The Chronicle of Philanthropy tells us about a talk delivered by Susan Desnond-Hellman where shew mentions the need for more transparency and listening to feedback. We wish this would not be only wishful thinking as far as the grants awarded by the Gatews Foundation to promote tobacco control in Africa are concerned.  but a very small part of the Foundation's activity but why should they be exempt of the transparency requirement?

4 grants from the Bloomberg Initiative to Ghana, Togo and Uganda

Visiting the Bloomberg Initiative's site we discover 4 grants awarded in May, June and july 2014. All are provided to groups that were already regularly funded in Togo ($100,293), Ghana ($80K) and Uganda ($32K and $75K). See the details below.

About the evaluation of the African Tobacco Control Consortium/ACS grant/project and what's next?

During a meeting a year ago in Dakar the existence of an evaluation of the ATCC/ACS grant by consultants for the Gates Foundation was mentioned but without any additional information. While we still don't know the details of the evaluation we found out, one year later, about its authors: EnCompass LLC of Washington DC, a group that also helped WHO design the Kampala based CTCA and is in charge of its evaluation (see below). As the fate of the Consortium looks uncertain, what's next? What happened to the RFQ posted in November by the Gates Foundation? Contacted, the Gates Foundation did not reply. As usual, everything remains secret.

Bloomberg Initiative: The search function of "what we fund' still broken

10 days after we signaled that the search function was broken, it still is!

Veteran's Day: what about looking back at the most recent battles in the tobacco war and discussing about the future?

As you can see from the most recent posts I have started to look at what happened in the past, especially since 2007/2008 when philanthropists Bloomberg and Gates provided millions of dollars that changed the face of tobacco control and I am wondering about what's next, especially, very concretely what is the Gates Foundation going to decide as they look for an organization to promote tobacco control in Africa for the next 3 years. I have a feeling of déja vu and fait accompli while at the very same time hoping for a change, a new practice in the process of grant management, engaging the whole community, including potential 'dissenters'. Making this wish I am only taking the word of CEO Jeff Raikes when he described his '3Ts priorities' in the speech he gave in Belfast in June 2012.
I have a few ideas about encouraging everybody to pitch in, share their personal evaluation of what happened since 2007/08 and offer suggestions/wishes for the next 3 years. Stay tuned.

Jeff Raikes about Philanthropy, Technology, Transparency and Teamwork.

Here is the whole text of the conference given by Jeff Raikes on June 5, 2012. Read it all and especially the parts at the end devoted to Transparency and Teamwork. I have reproduced the text below for 'safekeeping' because my experience has been that sometimes links were broken, texts were deleted and the original material was lost. Yes this also happened on the website of the Gates Foundation and for information about the tobacco control grants. 

 

Jeff Raikes: Technology, Transparency and Teamwork.

Surfing on line on the theme of transparency in relation with the ongoing selection process at the Gates Foundation I found this conference given in June 2012 in Belfast by Jeff Raikes (the soon to be leaving CEO of the Gates Foundation). As often he talks eloquently about the need for transparency and also says:“We need to go beyond grantees and partners, to the critics and dissenters of our approaches.” As a dissenter I cannot agree more but is such an attitude implemented now? What about testing it for real in the decision making of the Foundation of how the promotion of tobacco control in Africa should be organized? See below for a more recent comment by Jeff Raikes from an interview published on Humanosphere.

Let us do the numbers for the last seven years (2007-2013)

As it's grey and cold today I have decided to look at the relevant numbers for the grants awarded to promote tobacco control in Africa during the period 2007 to November 2013. I mostly computed the data for the grants awarded by CTFK for the Bloomberg Initiative, comparing them with the grants awarded by the Gates Foundation.

Gates Foundation scores 'very poor' on the transparency index

From the Seattle based Humanosphere blog.

Fabrice EBEH's presentation in Dakar (May 15) during the What future for tobacco control in Africa meeting.

Below is the summary of the presentation of Fabrice EBEH (in French 'Rapport Consultation ONG') with our translation (in English) of the main points (in yellow) with our comments (in light blue). Considering the content of Rachel Kitonyo's presentation all does not seem as well as Fabrice's summary seems to imply.

Rachel Kitonyo's presentation in Dakar (May 15) during the What future for tobacco control in Africa meeting, including our comments and questions

What to retain of Rachel's presentation (as it is summarized below in French -as the report in only available in French for now- with our partial translation in English of what we consider the key points, colored in yellow with our comments in italics and colored in pale blue).
As diplomatic and vague as the presentation is summarized, it does raise a significant number of issues about how the program was/is managed. How can the apparently badly needed changes be implemented? Or is everything going to remain the same?

CTCA's annual performance review June 24-27

From the CTCA's site this self-congratulatory presentation of their second annual performance review that does not tell us anything specific that we did not already know but probably cost a bundle. Who cares at WHO? Nobody as nobody outside of WHO is allowed to look at the cost effectiveness of the programs. Just try to get the detailed annual budget for the CTCA or the cost of this annual performance review...

What is the management overhead for the grants awarded to promote tobacco control in Africa?

This recent article about overhead at big charities invites the question about the management overhead. For instance, what is ACS doing for their apparent very substantial share  ($1.5 million+?) of the Gates Foundation grant ($7 to 8 million)?

Misappropriation of grants in Sierra Leone

As reported in the New York Times. How do we know it's not happening in other programs, including tobacco control? What is the level of transparency and independent financial audit/reporting?

Most recent grants from CTFK - Bloomberg Initiative for Kenya, Togo and Uganda

Grants for programs in Kenya,Togo and Uganda (see details below). The grant for Kenya amounts to $49.380, the grant to Togo to $152.963 while 4 grants to Uganda total $456.440.

Evaluation of the tobacco control programs in Africa?

A meeting has taken place in Atlanta at the end of October to look into evaluating tobacco control programs in Africa? Quis custodiet ipsos custodies? Any guarantee of an independent process? ie not having the funders and the people receiving the money self-evaluating themselves? Any hint of the creation of objective benchmarks and a simple scorecard like the one adopted for the EU in 2007?

Bloomberg's Initiative strategy in Africa in 2012?

While staff changes at CTFK occured in 2012, the level of the grants awarded (as of today) has been fairly low: $152.724 for projects in 3 countries: Ghana to promote pictorial warnings, Cameroon and Togo to support the enactment of strict regulations. Compared to the previous levels of funding this is very small. The same probably goes for the American Cancer Society that manages the millions provided by the Gates Foundation but does not provide any detailed budget.

Bloomberg Initiative: $39,709 to support tobacco control regulations in Ghana

The Bloomberg Initative has awarded $39.709 to Vision for Alternative Development to support a "consolidated campaign for the Implementation of the FCTC Article 11 (Pictorial Health Warnings) and implementation of Ghana's Public Health ACT.
According to the BI site, the 6 months project aims to strengthen tobacco control in Ghana by creating the supportive environment necessary for the Implementation of Article 11 of the FCTC.

Bloomberg Initiative: $54,994 to support the enactment of tobacco control regulations in Togo

The Alliance Nationale des Consommateurs et de l’Environnement du Togo was awarded $54,994 in January 2012 by the Bloomberg Initaitive to support the development, adoption and enactment of strong regulations under the Togolese Tobacco Control Law N°2010-017 of 31/12/10. The Executive Director of ANCE is Mr Ebeh Kodjo.
According to the BI site, the project aims to promote the drafting and effective enactment of strong regulations under the Togolese Tobacco Control law.

ACS commitment to Africa

The  American Cancer Society at a side meeting during the  15th WCTOH held in Singapore commended its Africans partners for their dedication and commitment to save millions of lives.

Source: Africa Tobacco Control Consortium Newsletter (text and picture)

Funding tobacco control in Africa: How much? What impact will the new $220 million grant have (or not)?

The Bloomberg Initiative received $375 million from Michael Bloomberg (in 2006 and 2008) and an additional $30 million from the Gates Foundation (as of July 2009). That's a total of (about) $405 million from 2007 to 2011 (5 years). That's about $81 million per year, divided between 5 entities (CTFK, The Union, The World Lung Foundation, the CDC Foundation and The Johns Hopkins School of Public Health).

The new 4 year grant of $220 million represent $55 million per year (without -for now- any additional funding from the Gates Foundation since the $18 million grant that had been mentioned in July 2011 has not been confirmed)

Honest Feedback, Advocating for transparency, 2007-2011

This is an updated version of the first two editions, with a slightly different subtitle and new cover pictures. Available via Blurb.com and as an e-book via Amazon-Kindle. It focuses on the need for public transparency (and accountability) as a condition to get real feedback and to improve the overall performance in the management of the grants awarded by the Gates Foundation and the Bloomberg Initiative to promote tobacco control in Africa.

Looking back at 2011

A subjective selection of significant posts among the 160 published in 2011 (+ 40 in French on Vers une Afrique Sans Tabac). Sorry but no systematic links (too long to do).

Message of Ebeh Kodjo about 2011 and 2012: what is the real financial situation for ATCA and the African Consortium?

In a short email message dated December 19, Ebeh Kodjo states that "2012 will not be easy. It will be challenging, annoying, with less money and more demands." Unfortunately he does not provide any hard numbers about ATCA or the Consortium's finances for 2011 or 2012. His apparent pessimism about money seems inconsistent with the information available that seems to point toward increased resources.

About the Gates Foundation

This interesting article by Caroline Preston in The Chronicle of Philanthropy.

The answer from the European Commission about our request for information: the announced contract is not yet signed

I received yesterday an email from Mr Thomas Kirchner (see below the content). He explains that "this contract does not yet exist. It is currently under preparation and foreseen to be signed before the end of this year." Therefore there are no documents available. I remain interested in a detailed breakdown of the budget as what was provided raised a certain number of questions that have not been answered. As for an eventual commitment to detailed communication and transparency, the eventual requirements seem limited but one should wait until one can see the actual contract. Mr Kirchner concludes: "Within EuropeAid, Unit D4 (Education, Health, Research and Culture) is in charge of this contract with the WHO and will be available to assist you should you require further clarifications. The Head of Unit responsible is Elisabeth Feret."

Testing the Access to Information procedure of the European Commission

As mentioned recently, the European Commission has awarded a grant to the World Health Organization to support the implementation of the FCTC in low and middle income countries. The budget as presented on line was sketchy. According to the EU principles (article 255 of the Treaty), I filed a request for what should be the whole document via this form available on line.  Once the request is registered they are supposed to provide an answer within a delay of 15 working days: that would be around November 3d. Wait and see.

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.

How difficult is it to speak truth to power at the Gates Foundation?

Seattle based blogger Tom Paulson reports about the articles devoted to the Gates Foundation published in the new issue of Alliance Magazine. He refers to Timothy Ogden's introduction that points out to the difficulty of honest feedback: under the headline Speaking truth to power, Ogden writes that it is increasingly difficult for anyone to speak truth to power at the Gates Foundation. We were surprised at the number of people who responded to our requests for submissions with some version of ‘I’d love to talk about that, but I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to comment publicly’.

WHO's performance to be independently evaluated?

An independent performance evaluation, reforms for more transparency and accountability? Read Margaret Chan's final speech at the General Assembly. The implementation of those goals is another story. What about detailing how the $9.9 million given by the Gates Foundation are used?

Small grants are beautiful, but are there any?

This post is about the effectiveness of "small" grants ($5.000/$10.000 and under). What happened to small grants in the strategy of the present programs? 

ATSA final report from the Johannesburg's conference: still many unanswered questions

A report (pdf format) about the Johannesburg's conference is available (only in English for now) on the site of the African Consortium. Our requests to know the budget of this conference that was funded by a special grant from the Gates Foundation have remained unanswered. Why is that when the grant funding another tobacco control conference is made public? Could we be shocked by the amount? The report does not provide any numbers or detailed budget about the various past and ongoing projects, nor a serious independent evaluation. While there has never been more money available to promote tobacco control in Africa one can still read that "funding is insufficient". Where is all the money going? Don't ask, don't tell. This practice seems very different from the principles recently stated by Bill Gates himself about transparency, cost-effectivenes assessment and impact evaluation.

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. 

African Tobacco Control Alliance: two year activities report (2009-2010)

The African Tobacco Control Alliance has published a report (pdf) about its activities since its creation in November 2008 in Durban. ATCA's Chair, Rachel Kitonyo, encourages ATCA's members are to read it and provide their feedback. As for now this document does not include any detailed information about the finances. Maybe it will become available later. How would ATCA rate on the Transparency Scorecard?

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

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

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

Read the program (Google doc.)

Radical Transparency

Listening to a presentation in Seattle by Allison Stanger about her book One Nation Under Contract. She emphasizes the need for radical transparency Here a short spot on YouTube. Below an interesting discussion on Wikipedia about transparency and accountability.

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. 

"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

Compiling the data about the grants awarded by the Bloomberg Initiative and the Gates Foundation (via IDRC-ATSA)

While the process for applying to the the round 8 of the Bloomberg Initiative and the round 1 of the Consortium is starting TCA thought interesting to compile the grants awarded by the Bloomberg Initiative and the Gates Foundation (via IDRC-ATSA). 

Bloomberg + Gates (ATSA) distributed to African organizations $5.130.746: BI allocated $3.457.863 (67,3%) and IDRC-ATSA allocated $1.672.884 (32,6%). 

3 countries collected 51.6% of the total (Nigeria, Kenya, Burkina) and the countries/groups funded both by BI and IDRC collected 86%.