The Early Days of Open Government Partnership in Nigeria: Issues of Coordination and Trust

Oludotun Babayemi October 24, 2016 6

So finally, after 3 years of intent, Nigeria got admitted into the Open Government Partnership (OGP) in July 2016 , a multilateral initiative that aims to secure concrete commitments from governments to promote transparency, empower citizens, fight corruption, and harness new technologies to strengthen governance while creating a platform for civil society organizations to collaborate with government institutions on ensuring transparency, accountability, citizen participation, and technology and innovation.

In view of this, I had to visit the city of Kaduna, to attend the CSO Day on Sunday, October 23 and the retreat with government institutions on Monday, October 24. The CSO day brought together civil society organisations from every part of the country to discuss the CSO draft national action plan and the future of CSO engagement with the OGP. One resounding issue during the day was coordination – not only amongst government agencies but also amongst the CSO, and a consensus was reached, that the Open Alliance continue to lead and coordinate CSO engagement for the actualization of the OGP in Nigeria.

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A cross section of participants at the OGP CSO Day

It is expected that as part of the coordination, CSOs that focus on the values of OGP at the sub-national level can become responsible in that area once they have been admitted as a member of the Open Alliance, who presently has about 40 members intending to join it, and 10 members already. As OGP success hinges on partnership, trust and coordination, it will be important to “think strategically with coordination, find champions in the government and to be able to overcome the issue of partnership, you must trust the government and the government must trust the CSOs” as taken from the words of Maureen Kariuki, the Open Government Partnership (OGP) Regional Civil Society Coordinator for Africa and the Middle East.

One other take away from the CSO Day was the conversation around how to encourage citizen participation and government feedback, using the platform OGP has created. With many citizens platform in the country without government feedback, I think it will be relevant and mostly appreciated if the National Action Plan been drafted presently can include a coordinated citizen engagement platform, in which government agencies can commit to being part of, to offer timely responses and feedback to citizens, maybe, the Nairaland of citizen participation. Sanjay Pradhan, the CEO of OGP, mentioned an example of such platform to be Prozorro, in Ukraine, actually, I met the developers of this public e-procurement system in Madrid during the IODC.

With the present draft National Action Plan having 8 commitments by the government, spearheaded by the Ministry of Justice, we can only hope that CSOs focus on their strength, and become watchdogs of the implementation of such commitments, I mean, they have been doing same in their everyday activities – maybe this time with proper coordination and direction – no thanks to the OGP!

 

Post #IODC16: Will The Real Open Data Movement Please Stand Up!

Oludotun Babayemi October 15, 2016 29

Isn’t it nice to be back in Europe after 2 months – this time in the city of Madrid, not to see the Santiago Bernebeu, or a bull fight, but for the 4th International Open Data Conference (IODC) between October 6 – 7, 2016, the second I will be attending after the IODC in Ottawa, Canada in 2015. These IODC’s always bring back memories of the Open Knowledge Festival where you can be overwhelmed with information due to concurrent sessions taking place at the same time. The IODC in Madrid alone had 87 talks, 28-preevents, 1.660 attendees and lots of hours of shared experiences, with new networks in the kitty, and I was opportune to speak at the Indigenous Open Data Summit, a pre-event of the IODC, and also a speaker and Impact Panelist on Data + Accountability session of the IODC on the first day.

Surprisingly, the word “open washing” came out of this conference like it never had before, and I am still pondering over this like, isn’t this the same that has happened to any multi – stakeholder movement. The truth is that it has become difficult for development to persist without politics of governments. The government in this sense can now be categorised into the government of developed countries, and those of developing countries. My thoughts here are for the government of developing countries, who have not realised the potentials inherent in Open Data. They do not have to do Open Data because it is been sponsored by another government organisation, they can look inwards (if they have the right kind of eyes) and find benefits.

For instance, infrastructure dataset could be made accessible to citizens, while entrepreneurs can build tools based on the available data public use. An example could have been Doctors Office a mobile application that provides patient with a doctor to talk to, and also a healthcare locator. Although at its early stage, I asked the creator of the platform what their plans were to make this available on feature phones, so rural communities could have access as this can reduce lots of waiting time, and unacceptable death due to emergencies. Also Imagine what cmapIT can do if location dataset is made available by the government of Nigeria – Government should collaborate with this entrepreneurs, and open up these datasets while they get revenue accrued from tax – that’s what government should be doing!

Oludotun Babayemi on the Impact Panel on Data and Accountability at the IODC in Madrid

Sitting on the panel on Data + Accountability with Global Witness, IDRC, Civio, Open Knowledge Germany,

Having said that, there is a renewed interest in open data by national statistics offices of countries. Talking to Mohamed Salimi, the Chief of the division of the statistics office in Rabat, Morroco made me had a sense of the direction of most statistics office and their interest in open data. Perhaps, to create more data for entrepreneurs in their countries, and largely an opportunity for them acquire knowledge on data processes. Systems that allow for capacity building is key to the open data movement, the people on the supply side must revamp the systems that operate within their organisation to allow for effective use of training within their institutions – I mean, how do you expect the culture of open data in an institution that still cannot run an organization email. As much as it is important to train government officials, it is also pertinent that we strengthen citizens knowledge on the use of data – which the school of data has started already, but a lot still needs to be done!

During the two sessions that I presented our Follow The Money work, I was asked on our relationship with the government, and how we hope to make the initiative locally owned other than some set of people determining campaigns in communities. Simply put, when we started, we were like an enemy of the government, but recently, government agencies had turned partners, but at arm’s length, with no MOU 😉 When we have contractors for government projects sending weekly situation reports to us on project implementation, then we are partners. In answer to the second question, we have community reporters leading campaigns in 29 states out of the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory of Nigeria but cannot initiate campaigns because we have not done proper orientation for them, but the idea is for them to own it. Going forward, you should look out for the next episode of Follow The Money driven by community champions themselves – how we did this, will be presented at the next IODC in Buenous Aires, Argentina. See you there!

 

This Week – We Invite you to Join us at the #Opendata Olympics in Madrid!

Oludotun Babayemi October 3, 2016 3

On the week of October 3 – 7, 2016, thousands of data and governance enthusiasts, from over 40 countries will be heading to Madrid, to discuss strategies and tools to accelerate the government – citizen engagement; and the future of open data as a tool for empowering local communities. Many call it the Olympics of open data!

It’s quite exciting to see how these movement has grown – from the open government data camp in the UK in 2010 ; the open government data camp in 2011; the Open Knowledge Festival in Helsinki in 2012; the Open Knowledge Conference in Geneva in 2013; the OKFestival in Berlin 2014; In 2015, it then became the International Open Data Conference that was held in Ottawa You might want to ask, how conversations in these conferences have impacted local communities like ours, I tell you – Connected Development [CODE] and its activities is a product of some of the conversations, and we look forward to some provoking thoughts out of the 2016 edition in Madrid.

In Madrid, we will be learning new tools, and sharing lessons learnt with colleagues from other 22 countries around the world at the Omidyar Network Governance and Citizen Engagement Forum from October 3-4 at the Impact Hub; the Journocoders event with School of Data and Open Knowledge Spain on October 4 talking data journalism at Medialab – Prado; and on October 5, we will be speaking at the Indigenous Open Data Summit and also attend the Follow The Money IODC Pre – event at RED.ES  on October 6 – 7 we will be joining the conversation on Open Data, while we will be joining the panel on data + accountability on October 6

If you will want to meet with us at these events, feel free to email – info@connecteddevelopment.org, and also we will be live tweeting and blogging some of the great events lined up for us, so subscribe to our blog here and on Twitter @connected_dev Hala Madrid!

 

 

Procurement Standards: Challenges Within the Nigeria Education Sector

Oludotun Babayemi September 24, 2016 1

“For most of the Millenium Development Goals project for education in Nigeria, that we monitored, we found out that a larger percentage of them have turned abandoned project, and the major reason was that there were problems at the procurement stage” said Mrs Hajia Liman, the deputy director at the Federal Ministry of Education, overseeing Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4) projects in education.

Owing to the lessons learnt from the Millenium Development Goal project, they decided to organise a 3 – day workshop between September 21 -23 at the Chida Hotel in Abuja in which CODE’s Follow The Money team was invited to facilitate sessions on open contracting standards and tracking the SDG project on quality education (SDG4). Actually, I was amazed by the number of challenges the head of federal government secondary schools highlighted, especially during the procurement processes.

The Open Contracting Standard Process

The open contracting standard processes as seen at http://standard.open-contracting.org/latest/en/getting_started/contracting_process/

Immediately Dr Hussain Adamu, of the procurement department finished his presentation, questions could not allow us to introduce our session, and I wonder, when last these head of unity schools, from the 36 states and FCT had time to discuss the procurement act, and standards they should follow. As stated in the Nigeria Public Procurement Act 2007, any institution embarking on projects must publish a call for bid in the Federal Tenders journal and in one other daily newspaper. Participants responded to this as – “We do not have budget and funds to advertise, so how do you want us to place adverts, even in the federal tenders journal, and at that, you even need to travel from my community down to Abuja to place the advert”. Oh my, God, I hope you aren’t dumfounded too! in this age of emails.

One challenge that was reiterated amongst the head of schools was how the inflation rate in the country is already affecting the budget that was appropriated. “For instance, If 10 million was appropriated for the construction of a library, and we send tender notices, and during bidding evaluation of all submitted bid, the average price quoted for the best and qualified contractors was at 15 million Naira, what do we do, even when only 7 million out of the money was released to us by the Ministry” asked one of the head of schools. It was a consensus at the workshop that this was the reality on ground with the 2016 budget already, and the response was that they should go ahead and agree in the contract document to pay the amount the school have at hand which is 7 million Naira, and later adding the balance of  8 million Naira to their proposed budget for 2017 as an ongoing project. So just in case, you will be analysing and tracking the 2017 budget, there are already issues to deal with.

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Oludotun Babayemi using participatory approach to disseminating methodologies that can be used in tracking SDG4 expenditures

Tracking of government spending isn’t sexy at all! I remembered in 2014 when we were tracking funds meant to provide an industrial water borehole at Federal Government Girls College, Gusau, we only went to the school to ask the principal question and armed with our already made paper visualisation on funds that was meant to provide the water borehole for girls in the school. He was amazed by the knowledge we already had about the project. However, before he could grant us an audience, he asked severally if we had authority from the Federal Ministry of Education.” But we do not have to, we are citizens, and even with a secondary level of identification, anyone can ask for what and how is his/her tax is been spent” I affirmed to him. In the same vein, the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) desk of the Federal Ministry of Education hopes to partner with our Follow The Money project in ensuring what happened to the MDGs wouldn’t occur again. At times, announcing such partnership is a delight, but one question still remains if the government can work at the pace we work – Something to look out for!

 

 

[REPORT] On #DemocracyDay: How the Nigeria Police Force Violates Human Rights

Oludotun Babayemi September 15, 2016 1

[DOWNLOAD FULL REPORT HERE]

Network on Police Reform in Nigeria (NOPRIN) and CODE with support from Stanford University Center on Democracy, Development and Rule of Law have created this Real-Time (Web-Based Map) Situation Awareness Platform (PoliceMonitor.ng) to enable the general public report police human rights abuses in their environment through various social media platforms. Police abuses include arbitrary arrests, unlawful detention, extortion, police brutality, torture, extrajudicial killings, rape and sexual misconduct, and other acts of police abuse and misconduct. We also mean to use this platform to connect our works with the Nigeria Police and organizations working around human rights issues in Nigeria.

police_monitor_trends_july__august_2016-2

Human rights abuse by the Nigeria Police on citizens in Nigeria between July and August 2016

PoliceMonitor is civil society driven and compliment the NPF’s Complaints Response Unit (CRU). Relative to previous complaints mechanisms, the NPF-CRU represents a step forward in police complaints and discipline management and accountability. However, the saying that the police cannot effectively police itself remains a self-evident truth. Like all police internal control systems, the CRU has not been as efficient in operations and satisfactory in results as was hoped. There is, therefore, the need for an independent, external, citizen-driven complaints mechanism.  It is hoped that the PoliceMonitorNG will compliment the NPF-CRU and other police internal control mechanisms and play the role of an alternative, external and independent citizens’ platform to monitor and report police abuses in Nigeria and to take timely action to ensure justice for victims and accountability by perpetrators.

In the first two months of the launch of this platform, – July and August a total of 34 complaints/reports were documented from 600 pages of Whatsapp messages.

police_monitor_trends_july__august_2016-7

Kindly visit policemonitor.ng to view all reports, and if you have comments and suggestions, do not hesitate to let us know via our comment box below.

 

Proactive Vigilance: How Citizens can hold their government accountable

Oludotun Babayemi July 18, 2016 33427

“Abeg, you cannot come and fix a programme that will start at 8 am on a Saturday morning, I will not be able to attend, please postpone it for another day or cancel it” responded Ijiwere to her colleagues, who wanted to visit another friend; “Let me tell you, If you want me to come for that ‘owambe’ party on Saturday, then you should let it start at 10 am” affirmed Giringori, to his friends who were planning an event for Saturday.

“Imagine, those my friend wanted to suggest 8 am as a time for that party, I totally disagreed, and told them Jigida will be aired on radio at that time, and that is the only way I can report the lack of water in Kagara” said Giringori to his elder brother – Ijiwere.

These are the kind of conversations that go on in Kagara community, with everyone looking forward to Jigida, a weekly, one – hour radio programme that allows for citizens to call – in and express their community needs, which afterwards are been documented and sent to the various local government chairmen, and State House of Representative for response and decisions to be made. That’s not all, the first 30 mins of the programme is dedicated to the Councillor of the community sharing with the community, how much and what they will be spending on in the week. This is what proactive vigilance is all about!

Although proactive vigilance or public participation in budgeting or government spending is relatively new, the evidence attesting to its impact on resource allocation and service delivery is growing. Many of the existing findings are based on the well-known Brazilian experience with participatory budgeting, established first in Porte Alegre in 1989, and now replicated in over 40 countries around the world. Nigeria, is not left out as well, as its government hopes to encourage citizen participation, with its recent commitment to joining the Open Government Partnership, a multilateral initiative that aims to secure concrete commitments from governments to promote transparency, empower citizens, fight corruption, and harness new technologies to strengthen governance.

You might be wondering, how many – landlord associations,vigilante groups, market women associations, community development associations, we have in rural communities. A lot of them! When are we going to start having “project vigilante” in rural communities, that will become voices of several communities, because by the time you wake up tomorrow morning, the news will be agog with “one billion dollars  to be released to provide water in Kagara” only to go to Kagara after one year, you will find out that Kagara has no water source or a broken water source. Quite pathetic, and that’s is the way we are – the leaders and followers.

Nevertheless, I am excited that the Story Story writers at BBC Media Action are focusing on how citizens at the local government level, can be proactively vigilant on such issues of government spending in their communities, and I recently had some hours of session brainstorming with the crew, on how citizens can become vigilant themselves, I hope all will be reflected in their popular radio drama coming up sometimes in fall. Thanks to Nkem, our Reseach Lead on government finance, who took some notes on the highlights, and I have added them below:

Follow The Money

Citizens can at every stage of this budget cycle engage their various government, but limited participation is expected during during formulation

  1. There is the local government or state government budget, a document that highlights government spending and revenue which can be for a financial year, or a multiyear.
  2. The Budget has its on cycle starting from formulation (when Ministry, Department, Agencies, put together their budget), to enactment (when the national or state legislative arm assent to the budget), to implementation (the stage at which contractors start executing projects in your communities), and lastly, the assessment stage (where everyone assesses the implementation of the budget, to provide feedback on how the next stage should look like)
  3. At every stage of the budget, citizens can make noise about their plight, and join in the conversation. They can form themselves as vigilante group or association, and always knock on the door of their  local government officer or Councillor.
  4. They can forward a freedom of information request letter to the local government chairman to request for their budget immediately it passes the enactment stage, and even ask more question like who is the contractor, what is the work plan for the project, how much is the contractor getting, and when will the project be concluded. Here is an example of a freedom of information letter if you want to write one
  5. Government at the local government and state government level should starting providing platforms as well, for the assesement stage. E.g. using local radio programmes like Jigida, create a referendum mechanism for your local government area for people to have their say on projects proposed for next financial year. It should not be only during elections, that citizens see chairmen of local government or governors of states canvassing for votes.
  6. Like I always say, the budget is not only the means by which government declare their spending, in fact 50% – 60% of what’s on it might not be relevant. The other way is to always listen to the state news on your local radio, projects will be announced at all times, especially when they are project funded by other partners, such as the federal government or international donor agencies.

Ijiwere and Giringori have decided to do away with social gatherings, and focus on becoming a vigilante for community projects in Jigida, and if you are reading this, you should be towing same way, and you should share this piece. I look forward to the final drama series on this – If you have listened to Story Story, Voices from the Market program, then you should be more expectant. See you all in Kagara town, listening to Jigida on radio!  

From left, Oludotun Babayemi, Nkem and the BBC Media Action Writers

                                                                                From left, Oludotun Babayemi, Nkem and the BBC Media Action Writers

 

The Social Change Summit in Lagos: Attracting Resources to Address Nigeria Social Challenges

Oludotun Babayemi June 24, 2016 0

For some of you that are familiar with the Lagos mainland, when you say you are going to Yaba, it means you are going shopping just by the railway. In the 19th century, Yaba was known as the host of a railway garage market where Lagosians buy “second – hand clothings”. Digitalization in the 21st century has rewritten the narrative of the town to the technology hub of Nigeria.” We now have 60 technology companies in and around Yaba, this is something fascinating for us, as it was only us and the University of Lagos. When we moved here in 2012” Bosun Tijani, the CEO of Co – Creation Hub affirmed in his opening remarks for the 2016 Social Change Summit.

Amidst several tensions in the country, on June 23, 2016 about 80 participants gathered around the popular Herbert Macaulay space of Co – Creation Hub to discuss how to attract talent, resources and creativity to address Nigeria’s most pressing social challenges. I might not be right, but it seems the event greatly focused on Media and Digital Innovations. And why not? Every conference now have that word – innovation! Whenever you are in Lagos, you must innovate to get to events early, exactly what I did, by flagging a motorbike rider, to get me to the event, all the way from Ikeja! Please don’t inform Ambode, I only wanted to avoid the painstaking Lagos traffic, and remember, I came from Abuja.

The hall was enlivened by the keynote speech of Ibukun Awosika, the Chairman First Bank Group, who to me appeal more to the female gender, as I observe closely all the female entrepreneurs, in the room, nodding to every of her lines. Maybe, I am the one that is not a female activist, but the good news was that her thoughts on rethinking a was quite electric. “When they ask you for your state of origin, erase it, and add your state of residence, likewise we should start thinking of how we have our talents come together to start up innovative solutions to our growing problems” Awosika mentioned. But is Nigeria really taken apart by the about three hundred and sixty something tribes in the country. She further said “There are three hundred and something tribes in Nigeria, so can you create three hundred and seventy something nation’s, leave out Yoruba, Igbo,Hausa, and all & become a true Nigeria, infact the things we do now cannot take us to where we are going as a Nation, we must change the status quo”.

The second keynote, which was on independent media as a catalyst for social change, was given by Stephen King and Ory Okolloh of Omidyar Network. Imagine, this is the third event in 2 weeks that I will be attending, in which the media is been referred to as the pillar of social change. Shouldn’t this be a concern for media organizations in the country? I am still watching and waiting for new innovative TV channels that can stand and surpass Channels TV. However, let it not sound like I am a TV fan, I do YouTube more than TV, and also a radio fan, especially at peak hours. “Independent media should leverage on opportunities embedded in the use of local languages, and content that citizens can easily relate with, an example is Wazobia FM and Urban FM” Ory Okolloh asserts. Truthfully, I am in love with the way Wazobia FM relates with its audience, a real game changer in the broadcast industry in Nigeria, but I am an advocate of market competition, as such we will need more of Wazobia FM’s.

Inasmuch as we welcome this burgeoning outfits, challenges in sustaining the opportunities that are available in this space remain enormous. One would not easily forget the reputable NEXT Newspaper which started in 2008 and ceased publication in September 2011 owing to advert shortage due to government influence on advertisement space in its print. Afterwards NEXT, was Premium Times, a leading online news, and investigative journalism platform, created 2011 in Nigeria.In order for investors and media practitioners to understand key constraints and opportunities that drive this media innovation,Omidyar Network and Reboot published a report on accelerating development & good governance in the new media landscape which highlighted opportunities in the independent media. You should read this if you are interested in starting or strengthening your independent media

No doubt, talents are scarce, and entrepreneurs are finding it difficult to recruit talent as reported in the  Global Entrepreneurship Research 2016 Watch out for my reaction to the report in my next post.With several panel discussions during the Social Change Summit, it was resolved that entrepreneurs should not recruit based on only compensation, but should think on making talents climb the ladder as a leader, after all talent is one thing, and leadership is another. “Sometimes what you need is knowledge,and not more finance” suggests Paul Okeogo, the Chief Operating Officer at Chocolate City. Many times you need knowledge on managing a team, and growing your startup to scale, most of which you can leverage from your peers, funders and prospective funders. To become sustainable as well, you will need knowledge on monetizing your ventures by creating content that your audience can relate with. “You don’t just think you have an idea, and you can throw it to the market, you must know who are your audience by segmenting your market” advised Abiola Alabi, owner of Biola Alabi Media, and former Managing Director at M-NET Africa.

Forget it, the Lagos market is huge, and that’s why it houses 20 million Nigerians, but for some of us, that grew up in the city, it can be tiring at times, and now that we do not leave in the city anymore, it’s difficult for us to wait till conferences or summit like this finishes. Before 5pm, my motor bike man came calling “oga it’s 5 pm we should enter the road now, you know say hold up go don dey build up” when you are in Lagos you know what that means. Four days in Lagos looks like it was 1 month, but really it was worth the time!

 

Connecting The Dots: The 2016 Global Media Forum in Bonn

Oludotun Babayemi June 21, 2016 8

The internet must protect human right and privacy…The internet must give people access to education and opportunities for participation, it should be a place where people can gather information and make their voices heard. This give rise to project such as the Nigerian Follow The Money initiative which was presented here yesterday. The initiative monitor whether aid money really reaches its destination. Team members go to the villages and follow up on the promises made by the politicians. They publish their findings in easy to understand diagrams on their website” – Thomas Silberhorn, Parliamentary State Secretary to the Federal Minister for Economic Corporation and Development, in his keynote address at the Global Media Forum

“I forget my name, I forget my dreams, maybe we do not have a lot of power because we are nothing, but sometimes a nothing man can change a lot” these mix of Words on Piano of Aeham Ahmad, 28 years old, from the streets of Yarmouk Camp in Syria who now lives in Germany keep lingering in my heart as another forum to discuss media, freedom and values kick starts in Bonn Germany. On the count, this will be the seventh global conference honouring our Follow The Money work.

In recent times, media organizations have been battling with innovating their newsrooms,as,challenges of its freedom and values has always resonated around newsrooms Ever since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 10 December 1948 at the Palais de Chaillot, Paris. Much reason why the Annual Global Media Forum in Bonn, Germany held between June 13 – 15 had its theme around this challenges and opportunities, and welcoming 2,000 participants including media CEOs, journalists, academics, artistsentrepreneurs from 110 countries

“We need to rethink the way in which we perceive, demonstrate and spread our values.” With those words, DW Director General Peter Limbourg opened the Global Media Forum in Bonn on Monday, June 13, 2016. Looking at the long list of exceptional speakers for the event, it asserts to me that we are living in the midst of communications revolution that is already having significant effects on democracy, and as such, it will be pertinent to instill our values as journalists, or “content creators” to research with due diligence, copy after checking the facts, stop scandalizing every harmless occurrence, and make reference to sources of credible information.

Pocket FM Radio was on the side stands. Visit them at http://www.pocket-fm.com/

Pocket FM Radio was on the side stands. Visit them at http://www.pocket-fm.com/

Our values are greatly important especially as enemies of freedom of speech increases across borders. From Turkey clamping down on newsrooms who are highlighting to the world,the human right abuses of the regime; to Nigeria, where a legislature is sponsoring a bill that infringes on the freedom of speech; to Maldive government arresting journalists. This is becoming a challenge to democracy as the “fourth pillar of democracy” is becoming threatened.

Suffice to say that the forum was a congregation of media enthusiast living everyday with the believe that the media (be it the new or the traditional) would continue to serve as a watchdog for democracies, even as press freedom declined to its lowest point in 12 years, and 13 percent of the world’s population enjoys a free press, according to the Freedom House 2016 report

Most of the thoughts from speakers ranges from how media organizations can start innovating their newsrooms; privacy and security, violence against women and children, the US presidential elections, migration issues in Europe, and the relationship between media and policy makers.

Actually, I was thrilled when participants asked what the relationship of Follow The Money was, with the government of Nigeria during the panel on digital innovations coordinated by the DW Akademie. “Always flat and parallel” I have answered, as only few state agents will embrace a watchdog initiative, that demeans the bureaucracy within government institutions. Maybe that might changed in the near future, I will sure be excited!

The Panel on Standing up for Human Rights: Digital Innovations

The Panel on Standing up for Human Rights: Digital Innovations source:DW

It was not only three days of discussions, I like the fact that every closing of the day is met with social gatherings long enough for networking, meeting old friends, and chatting new courses, as well.This time around, I enjoyed the food because special considerations were given to we chicken and meat eaters,still not yet a veggie, not sure I will be one. Talking about closing, Christiana Figueres. The Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) speech on ‘the role of the media’ was truly exceptional as it shaken the power of the pens that break news event “You should not just inform people on and about events, you as journalist, or content producers, should use your privilege to use news to connect the dots, to point out to the public the ramifications, and implications of the news event” Figueres said

Certainly, the freedom we all enjoy as information users are threatened, every day, as the connection with the world gets smaller and thinner, and digital technologies open our doors, to every form of air – with 6 in 7 people leaving in countries where they cannot express information, and ideas freely. Nevertheless, the lens and pens’ attitude to become impartial and objective will remain pertinent, and the words from Bonn will linger – sometimes a nothing man can change a lot, one time the peace will come if we can connect the dots!  

[CLICK] to view all pictures from the Global Media Forum

[CLICK] to Listen to all sessions from the Global Media Forum

Micro, Small and Medium Enterprise Funds: Where did all the money go?

Oludotun Babayemi March 3, 2016 1

After the 220 billion, there is the new 31.52 billion Naira for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprise: Where did, and will the money go!

Adamu and Chukwuma have been a long term friend at the Abuja Park in Gusau, Zamfara, and each time I want to buy a recharge card from their kiosk, they ask if I know how their businesses can be funded by the government, and if also they could learn how to write business proposals, if eventually the funds are made available. My response many times has been that they should check the Nigeria SME toolkit, and that also they can visit the Zamfara Medium and Small Enterprise Agency, or the Zakat Board of the state, and ask if they could learn writing proposals with their agency.

 

While not sure if there is one, it is certain that the state receives and must have received some SME funds from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). Yes! for some years now, funds meant for such programmes and intervention are being domiciled with the CBN, but unfortunately, it seem people like Adamu and Chukwuma will never have access to such funds or programmes, if the apex bank cannot justify or present impacts of “heavy funds” that have been allocated to micro, small and medium enterprise.

 

Nigeria, with an unemployment rate of 9.9% in Q3 2015 has a better unemployment rate than reported in 67 countries but worse than 113 countries, including 21 African countries with unemployment rates lower than 9.9% needs to employ innovative means of engaging MSMEs other than this “screaming headlines” kind of funding. The state governments are not even helping matters, as some of them had turn this funds into political campaign funds. Hold on – there is a new funding again for MSMEs called BIG (Business, Innovation and Growth), this time, it claims to be innovative, much more than the YOUWIN intervention

 

To so many Nigerians, it is not clear where they can access this funds, and when it becomes clear as well, the proper strategy is not used in mentoring young enterprises, and many times, potential enterprise are frustrated to start applying for jobs. Truth be told, the funds are out there for MSMES, and we really need to let potential entrepreneurs know, consequently, we are planning to visualise MSME Funds in Nigeria, and make people like Adamu and Chukwuma know where and how to get one.
If you have had access to an SME funds in Nigeria recently, what do you think about this controversies, and if you have gone through what Adamu and Chukwuma had experienced in the past trying to access MSME Funds, do let us know your thoughts

 

Join the Open Data Day Hackathon

Saturday 5th March at 9 am Abuja / 8 am London

We hope that a diverse group of you will join in the gathering of SME Funds data. During the Hackathon you will have plenty of chances to discuss all questions regarding MSME funds failures whether they be specific cases. Do not let your state or region leave a blank spot when we draw up the map of MSME Funds.

At the data party we will go through some of these questions:

  • What kind of MSME funds do we wish to collect (date, amount, description of intervention, location etc.)?
  • What are the possible sources (press, CBN, Bilateral Agencies, Multilateral Agencies)?
  • Getting started with the data collection for the MSME Funds Tracker

 You can join the Data party by adding your name and skype ID here.

How Data Journalism Might Halt Feeding Peanuts to Journalists

Oludotun Babayemi February 20, 2016 0

On the week of 8 – 12th and 15 – 19th in February 2016 in Abuja, I facilitated training on tracking government spending with 16 producers of popular current affairs programmes and 16 news editors from the broadcast media in a BBC Media Action supported capacity building for journalists. Nothing can be more exciting than igniting journalists passion to innovate their newsrooms, and also participating at this training were facilitators from BudgIT (One of the leading organizations using technology to hold government accountable) and Premium Times (An online media organization disrupting the media terrain in Nigeria).

 

No doubt, journalism is one of the profession that has young and vibrate women, and as confirmed the participants had a balance of gender, unlike other training have facilitated, that gender is always skewed towards the male. 60% of the participants had contact with the computer in the middle of the last decade, at the advent of Facebook, and just at the exit of excite.com and inbox.com, Certainly, our participants this time should be conversant with the new technologies. Were they? I will say yes, at least they are familiar with their newsroom consoles, Twitter and Facebook.

IMAG1646

Cross section of participants at one of the training batch

 

Other than their console, they were exposed to data journalism tools that can be leveraged on in scraping government budget data, from the conversion of PDFs to Excel using www.online2pdf.com ,Tabula and WebScraper. But one thing that remains clear is that many times, we see the budget data, but actually do not know when the money on the budget will be spent. So, what does a journalist do in such case? I asked, and most knew they are always the first to know, as a press release is always issued to media houses, when these funds are approved or released. So journalist can scrape the press release and find useful information for tracking government expenditure, and thus making a story out of it. Another useful tool is Google Alerts which sends instant email of keywords that has earlier been subscribed to by the journalist.

 

We all agreed, that there is always a time difference between approval and release of funds, as such the time lag keeps the journalist inquiring, and keeping the story alive. So many at the training asked, what funds do we have to keep such stories alive, in a program or in the news? In the last six months, I have trained 62 journalists from the print media, and broadcast, the same question keep re-occurring, and this time, I was almost told to change the training topic to how to write funding proposals for data journalism. Perhaps, this can stop the popular “Kwa” mentalism!

 

Oludotun Babayemi, a School of Data Fellow takes journalist through overcoming challenges in the industry

Oludotun Babayemi, a School of Data Fellow takes journalist through overcoming challenges in the industry

As more of the traditional broadcasters are now moving into data journalism, many are still incapacitated due to media ownership, availability of knowledge resources, skill gaps and a peer review center where knowledge can be exchanged on the go. Each of these training always draw us up to the solution, perhaps, as Connected Development [CODE] is working on its citizen lab for activists and journalists, it will be better placed to tackle some of this challenges.

 

As someone who has a background in Information Management, I always appreciate the media, and those that stand by the consoles to inform Africa, and through this we believe the console can turn around, educate, inform and impact our society. With more data been churned out everyday, and more funding in the direction of data journalism, I look forward to taking another set of interaction on data journalism with 24 news editors from Abuja, Lagos, Enugu, Adamawa, Kaduna and Plateau, in April, let’s keep the consoles jingling!