Tag Archives: Africa

Third Regional Meeting for Sub-Saharan Africa discusses experiences in facilitating access to information from Uganda, Nigeria and Rwanda

29 September 2021 –

What are effective ways civil society can advance access to information at the national level? What are the obstacles to effective access to information? These questions were at the center of the third regional meeting on access to information for the Sub-Saharan Africa region, attended by 15 civil society representatives from across the continent.

As a core element of fighting corruption, the UN Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) requires states to make information available about their activities and to engage with civil society. Article 10 requires states to take measures to enhance the transparency of their public administration, including by adopting procedures facilitating public access to information “on the organization, functioning and decision-making processes of its public administration.” States also have to publish information on corruption in the public administration. Article 13 commits states to guarantee public participation by “Respecting, promoting and protecting the freedom to seek, receive, publish and disseminate information concerning corruption” and “ensuring that the public has effective access to information.”

This regional meeting explored experiences from Rwanda, Nigeria and a regional perspective from the Africa Freedom of Information Centre (AFIC) based in Uganda.  The discussions were premised on the provisions of the UNCAC which require public disclosures and the dissemination of specific information relating to the functioning of public administration and their anti-corruption measures. Below is a summary of the interventions made by speakers:

A Regional Perspective on Freedom of Information and Access to Information

Mr. Gilbert Sedungwa, Executive Director of the Africa Freedom of Information Centre (AFIC) with membership of 46 CSOs across 23 countries in Africa, gave some insight into the work of the Centre which engages in advocacy campaigns for the adoption of good access to information (ATI) legislation and the monitoring of ATI Acts (where they do exist). In Africa, the lack of ATI laws is alarming – 29 countries are yet to adopt ATI laws, despite the importance of ATI raised in 6 African Union treaties and the general regional commitment to the implementation of the SDGs.

Mr. Sedungwa highlighted the importance of the passage of good quality legislation, which is as crucial as the existence of the law; but also, the importance of citizens’ knowledge of the laws. By 2011, 6 years had passed since the adoption of the ATI law in Uganda, but citizens were not using it to file FOI requests, therefore one could argue that its objectives were not being achieved due to a lack of use by citizens.

Citizen empowerment is essential when it comes to knowing how to use ATI laws. This was demonstrated by way of example: after AFIC trained and conducted workshops for CSOs, in one district 52 requests had been filed within 12 weeks. AFIC then trained some public officials who assisted with the responses to meet the demand for information, with 71% of the requests responded to. Civil society can play a role in building demand and also in fostering responsiveness from public institutions which understand their obligations and are able to respond to information requests.

In Malawi, a request for information on school books allowed public institutions to rectify a wrong concerning the procurement of books which were promised but not delivered within 2 years. Following this request for information, the government followed up with the contractor to provide the supplies.

In Kenya, the government paid a supplier to distribute sanitary pads for secondary schools, yet did not deliver. In Uganda, a contract issued to construct a school was not completed by the contractor who did sub-par work, even issuing a certificate of completion of the work, which was approved and paid for. By the time a request for information was filed 2 years later, the infrastructure built was not usable. The request facilitated the government’s identification of the shoddy job, and compelled the contractor to redo the work.

Mr. Sedungwa specifically spoke about the importance of civil society in the implementation of ATI laws. Civil society has several roles to play in this regard: standard-setting, advocating for the adoption of good ATI legislation, building demand for ATI legislation and monitoring it. Research is important to inform citizens of their right to access information – AFIC has in fact undertaken a study on the state of ATI in the region, covering around 18 countries.

Challenges with ATI laws abound, including a lack of provisions for independent oversight mechanisms allowing for promotion measures and capacitation of officers within agencies. Most national ATI legislation does not provide for information commissions, Ombudsmen or appeal courts. Ordinary citizens, youth, women and individuals with disabilities may find it expensive to access ATI mechanisms. Furthermore, public education on the right of access is a challenge coupled with a lack of capacity in public agencies, which plays a critical role in determining whether or not the agencies respond to requests.  Some of the information people request is refused by authorities. This breeds a culture of impunity, with people keeping quiet and not fighting for their rights.

Ultimately whether a country adopts an ATI law, and whether its institutions implement this law depends on whether civil society raises awareness about and promotes the importance of ATI.

Access to Information in Rwanda

Ms. Colette Ndabarushimana (TI Rwanda) noted that there is an ATI law in Rwanda which was passed in 2013 and whose enforcement has been entrusted to the office of the Ombudsman to monitor its implementation. The purpose of the law is to enable the public and journalists to access information which is possessed by public organs and some private bodies, therefore Rwanda’s law, according to article 3, is applicable to the state as well as private bodies.

There are several restrictions on the types of information that can be accessed by citizens. Information exempted from public access includes information that may interfere with the privacy of a person or intellectual property rights, information related to ongoing legal proceedings, information related to defence and national security, inter alia. The information classification is justified by the protection of national security, i.e. information that would destabilize national security including military tactics or strategy, intelligence, foreign relations, or “critical” economic interests and infrastructure security, among others (Articles 4 and 5 of Ministerial Order N°005/07.01/13 of 19/12/201).

The Office of the Ombudsman shall also establish regulations and procedures to promote the publication and dissemination of information. Access to information applications are free in Rwanda, unless any equipment or tool is used for the request that necessitates an extra charge.

Some challenges are experienced when it comes to the implementation of the ATI law and its benefits. There is low awareness by citizens of the law, but also by those who are supposed to (mandatorily) provide information: they do not know that is it mandatory to provide information; and journalists are subject to censorship. There is a need for collective action and greater awareness campaigns to inform citizens and the general public.

Access to Information in Nigeria

Rev David Ugolor, Executive Director of the Africa Network for Environment & Economic Justice (ANEEJ) noted that ATI is implemented under the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act of 2011 in Nigeria.

Mr. Ugolor focused on ATI in procurement and contracting processes, particularly using the Open Government Partnership (OGP) framework. Nigeria joined the OGP and it is hoped that through its process, commitment to the fight against corruption will be intensified. A lack of openness and widespread corruption has meant that resources earmarked for development have been redirected through a culture of opacity. The OGP framework has created an opportunity for co-creation with various stakeholders including civil society, and operationalizing the principles of transparency, accountability and public participation in access to information. The OGP has been a key element in promoting and ensuring that citizens also have access to information.

Nigeria’s National Action Plan spans four key thematic areas: fiscal transparency, anti-corruption, access to information and citizen engagement. Some of the key deliverables are open budgeting, open contracting, revenue transparency and a publication of a register of beneficial ownership, especially in the extractive industry.

It was noted that in the past, contracting information was not available, but things have changed through open contracting data standards. Contracting data and documents can be published in an accessible, structured and computable way to promote transparency. The open contracting data standard enables disclosures of data and all documents at all stages of the contracting process and increase contracting transparency. This helps the government in connecting with the public, by informing them of different types of government involvement.

A CSO public procurement monitoring working group was established in 2017, and works closely with the Bureau for Public Procurement (BPP). Nigerian CSOs are currently monitoring contracts and projects using the open contracting portal across the country. Effective ways to ensure ATI at the national level include the implementation of FOI, CSO monitoring and a full operationalization of open contracting data standards.

There are obstacles to effective ATI, one being the inability of government to institutionalize the OGP process in Nigeria. Secondly, not all government agencies are using the open contracting portal. Poor compliance with ATI legislation by government agencies is a huge challenge, compounded by a lack of capacity of CSOs and citizens to assess and use procurement and budget data made available by government, if this data is made available to them in a timely manner.

A common thread emerging from the presentations as well as comments from the participants was the emphasis on the importance of good quality ATI legislation and even more crucially, the capacity of civil society and a country’s citizenry in making requests and engaging with data requested.

The next regional meeting for Sub-Saharan Africa will take place in November, and is tentatively scheduled to discuss the topic of Beneficial Ownership Transparency.

The UNCAC Coalition invites you to participate in an Access to Information campaign. With the support of CSOs around the world, we aim to use access to information legislation or the UNCAC itself to obtain more information about the UNCAC review process and its key documents which are often kept secret. The UNCAC Coalition has created a request template for CSOs to use, and will track how quickly governments respond, if at all, and how complete the information given is. If you are interested in joining this campaign, please write to us at ati@uncaccoalition.org.

If you are a civil society activist from Sub-Saharan Africa and would like to become involved, please join our Africa Anti-Corruption Platform and contact our Regional Coordinator Pusetso Morapedi at pusetso.morapedi@uncaccoalition.org.

Africa Regional Overview: Taking stock of good practices – the UNCAC and beyond 

20 August 2021 – 

Through our Africa anti-corruption platform, closer engagement and calls with the members of our community in Sub-Saharan Africa, and the recent publication of several civil society parallel reports on national UNCAC implementation, we have learned about numerous developments and good practices in the region. Both in the UNCAC review process and beyond, this has been reflected through the enactment of new policies and practices, and commitments to international initiatives which favor transparency in numerous African countries. The below outlines findings and highlights from the continent in several spheres:

Transparency in the UNCAC review process

The review mechanism of the UN Convention against Corruption allows countries to keep key documents, namely the self-assessment checklist and the full country report, secret; only a brief executive summary of the findings has to be published. However, several countries from the region have chosen to be more transparent: 

  • Nigeria has published all three key documents from both its first and second UNCAC review cycle, namely, the self-assessment checklist, the executive summary, and the full country report. 
  • Mauritius, which is the sole country in the region that has signed the UNCAC Coalition’s Transparency Pledge, has also published both the self-assessment checklist and the full country report, for the second cycle of the UNCAC review (covering corruption prevention and asset recovery). In addition, it has published a comprehensive follow-up report with information on measures taken after completion of the second cycle review, in light of recommendations provided to the country.
  • In the second review cycle, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Eswatini, Kenya, Mauritius, Mozambique and Tanzania have voluntarily published their full country reports. 

Civil society inclusion in the UNCAC review process

In many countries, civil society organizations have contributed their expertise during the different stages of the UNCAC review, including by providing input in the preparation of the self-assessment checklist. In Ghana, CSOs participated in consultative meetings to mainstream the UNCAC review process into the national anti-corruption plan. In Kenya, representatives of academia, civil society, and the private sector were included in the committees set up to coordinate and oversee the national review process. In Zimbabwe, civil society was invited to provide input to the official reviewers in the second review cycle. In Benin, civil society was actively involved in the development of the government-approved National Integrity System Assessment and the Integrity Promotion and Anti-Corruption Action Plans, which constitute the current national strategic framework for the fight against corruption.

In addition, several multi-stakeholder training workshops on UNCAC implementation, organized by UNODC and the UNCAC Coalition, brought together national governmental focal points and civil society representatives, who later provided meaningful input to the review process in a number of countries, including in Côte d’Ivoire, South Sudan and Ghana. 

Civil Society Parallel Reports

The UNCAC Coalition supports CSOs in producing a civil society parallel report, covering articles of the second cycle UNCAC review, which deals with Chapters II (Preventive measures) and V (Asset recovery), as a contribution to the implementation review process. In recently published reports (2021) from the Africa region, several good practices were shared:

  • In a report on UNCAC implementation in Zimbabwe, produced by the Anti-Corruption Trust of Southern Africa, the establishment of specialized anti-corruption courts in Bulawayo and Harare was recognized as a good practice. Giving judges the opportunity to specialize on anti-corruption, it improves the judge-to-case ratio, thereby potentially promoting case resolution efficiency. Since their establishment in 2018, the courts have prosecuted five former Ministers, with two having been successfully convicted and currently serving their prison terms. 
  • The report on UNCAC implementation in Benin, produced by Social Watch Benin, highlights that Benin’s Law on Criminal Procedure allows for the defense of the collective interests of certain categories of victims and grants legal standing to civil society organizations to bring cases in the public interest. Under this same article, it is also possible to bring a civil action for compensation for damage caused by a crime, offence or contravention in relation to acts that directly or indirectly harm such collective interests. Since 2018, around ten corruption cases have been brought before the courts through the filing of civil action complaints by Social Watch Benin and the Association for the Fight against Racism, Ethnocentrism and Regionalism (ALCRER).
  • A report on UNCAC implementation in Madagascar, produced by Transparency International Initiative Madagascar, makes mention of a bill on the protection of human rights defenders drafted by the Ministry of Justice of Madagascar which was reviewed in consultation with civil society. Civil society and the High Council for the Defense of Democracy and the Rule of Law (HCDDED) organized workshops aimed at revising and adopting the Ministry’s draft law in accordance with international standards. This approach allowed for several amendments to be made to the initial draft, including the addition of a definition of whistleblower in the Malagasy legal corpus; the right of access to information; specific protection for defenders working in environmental protection and protection for defenders against online defamation or harassment.

Good practices on key anti-corruption policies

Asset Recovery

In Nigeria, civil society is closely involved in monitoring the return of stolen assets from Switzerland (and several other countries) in the return of the so-called ‘Abacha loot’. A part of the returned assets are being distributed among highly vulnerable constituencies and impoverished populations; others are used to pay for new infrastructure projects. The Africa Network for Environment & Economic Justice (ANEEJ) has called for strong civil society involvement and monitoring of the use of returned funds, such as in the case of the return of $73 million of the Malabu Funds to Nigeria by the UK in 2018.

Beneficial Ownership Registries

Open Ownership tracks countries across the world which have made some form of commitment to beneficial ownership transparency (i.e., the public disclosure of the individuals who ultimately own and control a company or another legal entity), whether fully or partially, covering the whole economy in a centralized and/or public format. Over 30 African countries are among the committed, with Egypt, Liberia, Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Zambia and South Africa fully committed to beneficial ownership transparency. However, the implementation of these commitments is still a work in progress in many of these countries.

National Budget Transparency

The Open Budget Index assesses the public’s access to information on how the central government raises and spends public resources, pointing to weak transparency and oversight of government spending. In its international ranking of countries, based on a transparency score out of 100 as the maximum positive score, South Africa shares first place globally (with New Zealand), scoring 87 points. Other African nations among the top 50 in the Index are Uganda, Namibia, Ghana and Kenya. However, the Index also highlights that most countries in the region need to do more to ensure adequate transparency of their national budgets. 

Procurement Transparency

Open Contracting Partnership provides a global overview of commitments to publishing open contracting data about all stages of the contracting cycle, from planning through to delivery, in a way that is meaningful, timely and accessible to the public. Opening up contracts to such scrutiny, and involving the public in line with the open contracting principles, can save countries money, reduce corruption, make contracting fairer for businesses and empower citizens to more easily track contracts that affect them. 16 African states are actively working on bettering procurement transparency, including Nigeria and Kenya.

Access to Information

The Global Right to Information (RTI) Rating ranks countries based on the strength of their national legal frameworks for the right to access information held by public authorities. While the majority of countries in Sub-Saharan Africa has yet to adopt access to information legislation and grant citizens the right to information, Liberia, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, Tunisia, South Africa, Kenya and Ethiopia rank among the top 25 countries on the list, scoring highly in categories such as the scope of their respective national RTI legislation and sanctions and protections under the law, among others. It is important to note that the RTI Rating only assesses the quality of the laws, not how the law is implemented and access to information is granted in practice.

Whistleblowing

A report by the Government Accountability Project and the International Bar Association found that several countries in Sub-Saharan Africa have enacted provisions on whistleblowing, namely Botswana, Ghana, Namibia, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia. However, in most of these countries, the report did not find a single published court case on the protection of whistleblowers in cases of retaliation. While 33 relevant cases were identified in South Africa, the judge ruled in favor of the whistleblower in only a quarter of those.

UNCAC Coalition Regional Meetings

The UNCAC Coalition has brought CSOs from the continent together for two virtual regional meetings. During the first meeting on public procurement in times of Covid-19, speakers from Zimbabwe, Uganda and Kenya shared their country perspectives and best practices:

  • TI-Zimbabwe and others tracked the beneficial owners of companies that were awarded public procurement contracts during the Covid-19 pandemic;
  • The Ugandan-based Africa Freedom of Information Centre published a study which revealed that the Covid-19 pandemic significantly increased public procurement corruption risks in the country;
  • Kenya has taken steps to partly implement UNCAC Art.12 and 14 by establishing a beneficial ownership register. However, contrary to international best practice, the register is not publicly accessible;
  • TI Kenya submitted several access to information requests to increase public procurement transparency;
  • The Namibia Institute for Democracy observes that, as a result of education and awareness-raising campaigns targeting youth, anti-corruption awareness in society is growing.

For the second meeting on whistleblower protection, speakers from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Namibia and South Africa discussed legislation in their respective countries and advocated for stronger enforcement of whistleblower protection mechanisms. It was remarked that civil society in DRC has managed to mitigate some of the risks for whistleblowers by forming partnerships with national authorities such as police forces, as well as with international organizations, exposing cases through their channels.

The Anti-Corruption Platform for Sub-Saharan Africa provides a platform to showcase civil society organizations working on anti-corruption, in particular through activities around UN Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) and its review process. Organizations can share their work and contact information on their respective profile page. Through a dedicated email list and regular calls, organizations that are part of the platform discuss best practice approaches, coordinate advocacy activities, update each other on relevant developments and learn from each other’s experiences. For more information, visit the Platform page here.