Aidspan

Context

Aidspan is an NGO whose mission is to reinforce the effectiveness of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria by serving as an independent watchdog of the Fund and its grant implementers through providing information, analysis and advice, facilitating critical debate, and promoting greater transparency, accountability, effectiveness and impact. Aidspan was originally based in the USA, but in 2007 it moved its entire operation to Kenya. Most staff are Kenyan. Aidspan's mandate relates to Global Fund activities and impact worldwide, not just in Kenya. In earlier years, Aidspan’s work with people at the grassroots level was very limited; we published GFO and other materials, but we had little in the way of face-to-face dealings with the country-level users of those materials. But in 2010 we started an ambitious programme to identify and mentor people and organisations who could push for increased accountability in the implementation of Global Fund grants.

Website:
www.aidspan.org

Area of Work:
Kenya, Africa

Contact Person:
Angela Kageni

We call this the Local Watchdogs Project. It’s a broad project that various other activities under the Unit supplement. Our objective is to stimulate local information‑sharing and critical debate in order to improve transparency, accountability and effectiveness in the implementation of Global Fund grants. The local watchdogs we work with currently consist of local NGOs, but in time are expected also to include individuals such as journalists, academics, and parliamentarians. The watchdogs do not serve as Aidspan representatives, and Aidspan does not fund them. They work independently within their countries, but can call upon Aidspan for mentoring advice. In 2011 we visited ten countries within Eastern and Southern Africa that are recipients of Global Fund grants, that have minimal political strife, and that are safe to travel to. Within these countries we assessed 80 organisations, 43 of whom expressed interest in serving as local watchdogs.

Approaches to implementing Community monitoring/accountability

Our experience has been that the simplest steps in information sharing can have a big impact on involvement and, indeed, on effectiveness of grant implementation. Publication of CCM minutes online, for example, can have a huge impact. Aidspan will continue to encourage CCMs to imitate the Global Fund’s own admirable transparency policy. As the “Watchdog” Aidspan saw a number of difficulties and shortcomings in this large multi-billion dollar institution:
Poor communication of its policies, procedures and expectations and the use of complex language and terminology which made it difficult for grant applicants and other stakeholders to understand them.
Poor presentation of grant impact and performance which made it difficult to know what individual grants are achieving.
Lack of spaces and opportunities for the Fund’s stakeholders to come together to discuss how to improve policies and procedures and increase impact of the grants.
Impact of grants reduced by Global Fund in-country mechanisms (CCMs) and implementers acting too slowly to address their limitations.
In response, and as GFO began to be regularly published, Aidspan engaged in other activities.
In 2003 it began working with Country Coordinating Mechanisms (CCMs), and then our work just escalated from there.

Results

The nature of Aidspan’s work, especially the silent advocacy, means that it is not always possible to show the direct impact of its activities. Some key achievements are given below with examples where relevant.

Establishing and raising money for the first watchdog for a major financing institution with the purpose of increasing the effectiveness of the institution.
Developing and maintaining trust and confidence in Aidspan at the highest levels of the Global Fund, allowing access to data, forms and procedures and maintaining observer status at Global Fund Board meetings.
Influencing the Global Fund funding model from the beginning through publication of the Equitable Contributions Framework. This approach (which was adopted by many NGOs, and then, in modified form, by the Global Fund) is believed to have had a distinct impact on donor country contributions to the Fund. Improving the quality and completeness of data through requests to the Fund by Aidspan, for raw grant data useful in Aidspan's analyses ,and the subsequent improvement in how those data are presented..
Exposure of misuse of Global Fund money: In 2005, for example, Aidspan informed the Global Fund of corruption in the Ugandan Ministry of Health. The Fund did an investigation and suspended all grants until procedures had improved. Museveni established a public commission of inquiry, which concluded that the Minister of Health had lied to the inquiry. Three Ministers were required to return Global Fund money and were removed from office. Next, Uganda set up an Anti-Corruption Court. By 2009, the court had sentenced two people to jail for ten years for stealing Global Fund money.
Reporting in-depth on the Fund’s problems in 2011/2012, (many were linked to OIG findings), on the Fund’s efforts to address them, and then how the new strategies began to evolve. Aidspan has written over 40 articles on the strategies, the new appointments, firings etc (ref GFO 222).
Mentoring of CCMs. For example: In 2003, China’s CCM requested Aidspan to mentor its proposal-writing team. China had twice failed to have its proposals approved, and was nervous about failing again. This resulted in China getting its first $100m grant. In 2004, Nigeria’s CCM approached Aidspan to evaluate some grant-implementation problems and make recommendations, especially regarding the CCM’s role in oversight of grants. Aidspan’s report warned that if changes were not made, the grants were likely to be terminated at Phase 2 review.

Lessons

The lessons are varied, but let me pick one project:
Under the Mentoring Watchdogs project, we intended to target country-level actors, and together with them explore consistent and verifiable mechanisms, processes or actions that can be implemented at the country level; and get these to be driven by country stakeholders to promote accountability, transparency and effectiveness. It has not been so easy due to the following:

Funding for local projects is a problem because Aidspan is not a grantmaking/managing organisation and despite the support offered to local partners, many waited instead for us to do the work of seeking funding for them.
Varying levels of awareness (& INTEREST) about GF processes & policies meant our partners and trainings were never on a level playing field. And GF is not interesting for most, neither is data analysis
Conflict of interest - we never knew who were genuine in their seeking to interact with us. Others thought we'd get them money from the GF, others were using the project to push their own agendas.
Fear of recrimination or being associated with us, a watchdog. That term has seriously negative connotations
Difficult to get the ball rolling – low commitment + ability + a challenging accountability/ transparency environment all led to low activity. Even online existing forums, info access, etc were very low. Aidspan seemed to push everything, everyone else so submissive and observing only. Very few took charge)
Misconceptions about “watchdogging” + about Aidspan agenda. WE were left wondering "Are we focusing on the wrong people (or the right people with the wrong motivations)?"
"Workshopitis" - our trainings suffered from people fighting to get invited, submitting really strong proposals, only for most of them to just come and sit and leave without any work submitted or activity implemented upon posttraining follow-up