1. The Indigo Trust
Funding transparency and accountability in
Africa

2. Transparency and Accountability in
Africa
The case for action:
• There are no African countries inside the top 30 of Transparency
International’s Corruption Perceptions Index of 174 states in 2012.
• Freedom House only considers 10 of the 54 recognised African states as being
fully free in its 2013 State of Freedom in the World Report.
• According to African Union estimates, the continent loses some $148
billion, equivalent to 25% of GDP, due to corruption every year.

3. Mobiles and ICT in Africa
73% of the world’s mobile phones are found in developing countries.
In Africa over half the population has access to a mobile phone and it is
estimated that by 2020 this access could reach 100%
95% of phone users are on pre-pay plans
Internet usage has now reached 12% and is growing fast with new submarine
cables allowing better speeds and mobile internet allowing access even in the
most rural areas.
The African mobile and internet market is as innovative and context-driven as
anywhere – “Please call me” texts and mobile money like M-PESA are African
innovations that have changed millions of lives. M-PESA now handles 11% of
Kenyan GDP and more than one billion “please call me” texts are sent for free
every month.

4. The Indigo Trust funds those
applying innovative mobile and
internet technologies to issues of
transparency and accountability in
order to empower citizens to fulfil
an active and assertive role in the
processes governing their lives…

5. Indigo Funding
areas

6. Health
received £10,000 to set-up an
SMS platform for patients to
report problems with the
healthcare system. GACC’s team
then works hard to resolve
complaints and improve service.
CIPESA have also received
£12,000 for health mapping and
reporting in Uganda.
Neighbourhood
received £12,000 for their
‘Lungisa’ project which will allow
residents of Cape Town to report
on a host of local government
services including water, sewage,
schooling, policing and more.
Simple (online) Cartography
In Kibera, one of Nairobi’s most notorious slums, citizens don’t
even have something a simple as a map of where they live.
The Map Kibera Trust received £11,320 to improve its citizen-
led digital mapping of the area. As simple map can have huge
advantages for advocacy, service provision and personal
safety.
Violence
Sisi ni Amani-Kenya were awarded $18,158 for
improvements to their PEACE TXT platform designed to
map and prevent violence. This platform even
undertakes a basic demographic analysis of those
reporting so as to target the most effective messages and
advice to users.
Mapping
and
Reporting

7. Our association with mySociety has been a long one.
Sites like fixmystreet.com, theyworkforyou.com and
whatdotheyknow.com are important tools that empower citizens
in Britain. Together we are working to bring more applications like
these to various African states with a grant of £40,000. This project
has already had some success…
Developed by Ghanaian software developers
Hutspace, in collaboration with mySociety, Indigo
awarded £9,400 for Odekro which allows
Ghanaians to monitor their parliament and MPs
and gives them free access to Hansard.
Funded by The Omidyar Network the Mzalendo
team worked with mySociety to launch this
parliamentary monitoring website in Kenya.
Parliamentary
Transparency
As well as opening up parliaments Indigo aims to increase access to the legislation they enact…

8. Accessing and
Understanding Legislation
Indigo awarded £7,000
to a project based at the
Co-Creation Hub in
Nigeria for a Nigerian
Constitution App.
Available on multiple
platforms this app has
now been downloaded
in excess of 700,000
times!
£22,672 was awarded to the African
and Seychelles Legal Information
Institutes to develop an e-book for
the laws of the Seychelles. Often
judges and lawyers do not have
access to the latest laws and cases
when making their arguments in
court.
The Constitutional Excerpts project at UCL does
vital work. Constitutions are the very basis of law
in most countries so Indigo gave the project
£30,370 to undertake XML tagging on the world’s
constitutions and thus make them more user
friendly to online communities.

9. Making
Government
Accountable
to All
A grant of £36,800
should allow the
collaboration needed
with the Open
Knowledge Foundation
to dramatically improve
this clever website which
keeps a close eye on
budgetary spending in
Nigeria. The current
additions should see the
2013 National Budget as
well as six state budgets
become fully visualised
and open to online
interrogation. BudgIT
should allow Nigerian
citizens to gain a much
greater understanding of
where the money goes
and how to argue for
change.
iWatch allows Nigerians
to compare the
promises made by
government with the
results on the ground
and, crucially, have their
say about projects great
and small that might be
over budget or even
delivered early! A grant
of £5,000 was awarded
to develop this useful
tool which will help
hold the government to
account by recording
their promises for
posterity and allowing
the easy measurement
of progress.

10. We also realise that we have a responsibility
to be transparent and accountable here at
Indigo…
We have made a grant of
£10,000 to the Open Aid
Register to develop their website
which allows smaller foundations
and charitable trusts to publish
there grant data in the
standardised XML format
required by international aid
registers like IATI. This tool
allows small operations like ours
to demonstrate their
commitment to transparency.
The Transparency and Accountability
Initiative has convened a New
Technology Sub Group with the help of
the Indigo Trust, The Omidyar
Network, Open Society Foundation, The
World Bank and Hivos to help innovate
new ways to make our field of work
more closely aligned with these
important goals.

11. Other examples in
the field

12. services.gov.ng
Across Europe governments
have ever more advanced
websites to help citizens access
public services. Nigeria’s
recently launched government
website attempts to bring this
level of information and service
to those with the internet.
Parliament Watch has been
monitoring various German
Parliaments for some time. Marsad
is a project with the Tunisian
organisation Al Bawsala which aims
to monitor the country’s
Constituent Assembly to ensure the
new constitution is produced in a
manner that is both transparent
and accountable.
The African Development Bank has produced an Open Data
Portal as part of its “Africa Information Highway” initiative. The
platform is growing all the time and currently displays key
economic data for 30 African nations. The data is well presented
and can be easily manipulated. High quality access to relatively
simple economic information like this is an important
development. Not only can it improve our understanding of the
differences between countries but it can also help formulate
better policy and business plans.

13. Mapping projects have become commonplace
in Africa and elsewhere. One of the best ways to
learn about the field is through Ushahidi; one of
the original platforms for this type of activity
which came into being during the violence that
followed the 2007 Presidential Elections in
Kenya. The following projects all utilise the
Ushahidi platform in some way.

14. Evidence, data and
research

15. Avila, Feigenblatt, Heacock and Heller (2010) “Global Mapping of technology for transparency and
accountability” Transparency and Accountability Initiative. Available here.
Grönlund, Heacock & Sasaki, Hellström, Al-Saqaf (2010) “Increasing Transparency and Fighting
Corruption through ICT” Spider Centre. Available here.
Mandlebaum (2011) “Strengthening Parliamentary Accountability, Citizen Engagement and Access to
Information: A Global Survey of Parliamentary Monitoring Organisations” National Democratic
Institute and World Bank Institute. Available here.
Ostling (2012) “Parliamentary Informatics Project – Who are their users and what is their impact?”
Journal of eDemocracy, 4(2): 279-300. Available here.
Sarrazin (2011) “Texting, Tweeting, Mobile Internet. New Platforms for Democratic Debate in Africa”
Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Available here.
UNDP (2012) “Mobile Technologies and Empowerment: Enhancing Human Development through
participation and innovation” Available here.
Waema and Adera (2011) “Local governance and ICTs in Africa – case studies and guidelines for
implementation and evaluation” Available here.

16. Websites:
The Spider Centre works on ICT4D from Stockholm University:
http://www.spidercenter.org/
The Opening Parliament Project and Blog:
http://blog.openingparliament.org/
Ushahidi was one of the most influential and early citizen mapping tools:
http://www.ushahidi.com/
mySociety have a number of projects based around accountability:
http://www.mysociety.org/
Parliament Watch is a German parliamentary monitor with global ambitions:
http://www.abgeordnetenwatch.de/international-248-0.html