Kenya, Cameroon and Malawi COVID Funds Report
Communications
November 17, 2021
We have now published the status of COVID Fund tracking in Malawi, Kenya and Cameroon
The COVID19 pandemic was expected to have a devastating effect on Africa’s weak health infrastructure, but it rather left a more devastating trail economically – spiking the already high unemployment rate and plunging the country into another recession.
With high influx of donations by international agencies, individuals and private organisations to combat the deadly virus, the challenge with most African countries is the lack of transparent and accountable systems that can respond to emergency situations.
Our experience has shown rounds of crisis profiteering, creating quick rich schemes for “tenderpreneurs” in a restrictive environment that lacks accountability and civic engagement. We have also seen restriction of civic spaces under the guise of lockdowns as well as brutality by state officials, this was why the COVID-19 Transparency and Accountability Project (CTAP) was launched to promote accountability and transparency through the tracking of COVID-19 intervention funds across 7 African countries.
The project is implemented by CODE’s Follow The Money and BudgIT. Both organizations have been leveraging their Tracka and Follow The Money platforms, as well as international chapters in other six focus African countries to activate a Pan-African tracking system for all COVID-19 funds received and donated to these countries.
CTAP’s shared long term vision is that every community in the continent has skilled, sensitised and largely self-organising citizens engaged in budget-tracking while presenting feedback and results to the government and development partners in a constructive manner. All efforts are aimed towards building that informed and engaged citizenry – a movement of factivists – in the medium to long term period.
In the past year since the project was launched, Follow The Money has tracked COVID funds in Kenya, Cameroon and Malawi. Click to read the full reports from these countries.
