New Opportunities
Open Gov Hub
We have been proudly operating the Open Gov Hub since co-founding it with Development Gateway in 2012. The Open Gov Hub has retained all of its members through the pandemic and now, in April 2021, the Open Gov Hub is becoming” OGH 3.0” – the exciting 3rd phase of the Hub’s evolution – a bigger, brighter, and safer co-working space in downtown. If you are interested in joining our 50+ organization network and making the Open Gov Hub your DC office home, request a membership packet.
The Hub is a vibrant community of social impact organizations, large and small, that work together to improve governments and empower citizens around the world. The beautiful new space itself will continue to give our organization access to a world-class work and event space, including 35 collaboration spaces, tech-equipped meeting rooms, plus daily opportunities to collaborate with other teams even while working remotely. If you are still not sold on the benefits of a network-centered, innovative co-working space, read this op-ed.
Education Out Loud
Global Integrity’s concept note for Education Out Loud, which is Global Partnership for Education’s fund managed by Oxam IBIS, has been selected to move on to the proposal development stage. Our proposal is a joint partnership with PSAM and local partners in Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, Zambia, and Teach for Zimbabwe. The aim of the project is to strengthen the voices and diversity of civil society actors and alliances in transnational spaces to enable an environment where national actors can address the learning crisis. The ultimate impact we hope to create is ensuring kids develop the skills and tools needed for learning.
Global Integrity will be responsible for the creation and implementation of clear plans for project rollout, MEL and communications and, facilitating connections to transnational spaces. Country partners will lead on the design and implementation of advocacy and engagement action plans in their respective countries and become key players in problem-focused cycles of action and learning.
Implementation Gaps
In collaboration with the Leveraging Transparency to Reduce Corruption program managed by the Brookings Institute and Results for Development, we will be conducting research to understand why there is often a gap between policy commitments relating to transparency, participation and accountability, and the implementation of those commitments. The research will involve comparative cases studies in Colombia and Nigeria to ultimately improve the governance of natural resources. As we identify different types of implementation gaps and analyze their causes – the political and technical dynamics that perpetuate them – we will explore the effectiveness of approaches used to address them at the country level. We then plan to apply our findings to other sectors and countries.
Next Phase for the Opening Central Africa Coalition
Global Integrity is excited to support the Anti-Kleptocracy Coalition of Central Africa for a second phase as it welcomes a new member: Friends of Angola. In the first iteration of the project, four Central African organizations came together, with Global Integrity as a learning partner, to organize and launch a digital campaign engaging citizens about the corrosive impacts of kleptocracies, through narrative storytelling and local and international advocacy events. In 2021, the Coalition will build a new multimedia campaign to creatively engage citizens, host mobilization events in our five member countries, and launch an international advocacy
Project Updates
GI-ACE Annual Report
Read the Global Integrity Anti-Corruption Evidence (GI-ACE) research programme 2020 Annual Report; a rundown of our fourteen research project’s achievements in developing practical anti-corruption interventions that can be feasibly implemented by practitioners and policymakers alike. Far from viewing corruption as a generic issue, each project looks at corruption through a narrow and specific lens, such as:
- Mapping out the complex international framework of illicit financial flows and providing policy reforms on financial secrecy regulations
- Developing practical ways to recognise and promote integrity as an anti-corruption mechanism
- Identifying measures to reduce the risk of corruption in procurement
The GI-ACE programme saw an outstanding year of research findings despite COVID-19’s obstacles to fieldwork and research design and methodologies, and a volatile geopolitical landscape.
Call for Project Ideas
Don’t miss out on this call for ideas from Transparency and Accountability Initiative and the International Finance Corporation. The call is open to organizations based in Colombia and focuses on improving upon the following themes in the extractives sector:
- Improving transparency
- Using extractives data to improve COVID-19 response and recovery
- gender and ethnic diversity and inclusion
The deadline is March 31st and selected ideas will receive $25,000-100,000 USD in support.
CTAP
- COVID-19 Transparency and Accountability Project (CTAP) country level partners held press conferences announcing the official start of the project’s implementation.Follow the Money Liberia chapter officially launched the project. The Kenya chapter held an official project launch in Nairobi. Actions for Development and Empowerment (ADE) officially launched the CTAP project in Yaounde, Cameroon.
Events
In advance of Disruption Network Lab Behind the Mask conference with Jorge Florez and the CTAP team will be participating in Collective Care: Community Responses to COVID-19 on March 10th at 7 pm GMT.
If you will be attending Mozfest 2021, you can catch Jorge Florez speaking on March 15th at 2:30 pm CET at the session Open data standards design behind closed doors? with Silvana Fumega, Ana Brandusescu, Michael “Miko” Cañares.
Our Global Integrity and SOAS joint Anti-Corruption Evidence event on Does Structure Rob Agency: Gender Mainstreaming in Anti-Corruption Research Design? with panelists Pallavi Roy, Claudia Baez Camargo, Jacqueline Klopp, and Sohela Nazneen. The event will address why gender is an important lens to take when engaging in corruption research. Join us on March 23rd at 10 am EST.
GI-ACE researchers Jackie Harvey, Tena Prelec, Daniel Haberly, and Ricardo Soares de Oliveira will be discussing Financial Patterns and International Architectures: Grand corruption, Nigeria and the Role of the West in collaboration with Oxford University on March 24th at 3 pm GMT.
On March 25th at 8 am EST, GI-ACE researcher Jacqueline Klopp will converse with Lornah Wahome with the Busara Center for Behavioral Economics, David Orega with Sauti Africa, and Eleanor Wiseman with the University of California Berkley on COVID & Corruption: Impacts and Lessons for Small Scale Cross-Border Trade in East Africa as part of 2021 OECD Global Anti-Corruption & Integrity Forum. Claudia Baez Camargo will also be presenting at the OECD on March 25th at 1 pm CET, focusing on integrity, social norms and informal practices in emergency response situations.
Noted
Reads for Women’s Month
We recommend checking out Sohela Nazneen on the Institute of Development’s podcast episode, Negotiating Gender Equity in the Global South: The Politics of Domestic Violence Policy. A feminist political economist, Sohela explains how broader domains of power need to be addressed if we are to have gender-inclusive policy outcomes.
Kevwe Oghide, Communications Director at Connected Development, recommends
I Do Not Come to You by Chance, a novel by Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani. The story mirrors the different social vices in Nigeria and how these often result in tarnished dreams and the pursuit of quick, dishonest money-making schemes as a means of survival.
Ambika Samarathya-Howard, our Communications Lead, recommends The City of Good Death, Priyanka Champaneri’s debut novel taking place in India’s holy city of Banaras and winner of the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing.
Pallavi Roy, Research Director at SOAS-ACE, recommends the television series, Can’t Get You Out of My Head by Adam Curtis. An imposing sweep of ideas where capitalism, imperialism, and sexism all morph into one grand ideology of control; it could well be the Matrix in documentary form with factual footage.
Aiysha Varraich, research fellow with the GI-ACE programme, recommends The Lion, the Polygamist, and the Biofuel Scam, a roller-coaster piece from Wired about how a member of a breakaway Mormon sect teamed up with a hard-partying tycoon to bilk the government for hundreds of millions of dollars.
Johannes Tonn, our Director of Integrity & Anti-corruption, recommends reading the December 2020 UNODC report and a recent reflection by Alexandra Habershon from the World Bank Group. In the coming months, the GI-ACE Programme will further explore why incorporating a gender lens is important in anti-corruption work.