Category: Uncategorized
KETA VILLAGE, BURIED IN THE GORONYO DAM BY FLOODING
Mobile Geo-tagging of flood plains within Keta Village |
Consequently, the team decided to work at Keta Village, situated just behind the Goronyo Dam. We sited a new health centre, as we proceeded to the village head compound. Alhaji Garbi Jingi explained how they have been coping with incessant flooding for 5 years. “We need the urgent construction of an elaborate embankment that will protect the village from loss of their crops and farming activities to flooding.
Conducting a group discussion with key community members |
The #WalktoMali team engaged the community members in a participatory mapping, while sharing ideas and local communication that can ensue before, during and after emergencies such as flooding. The only primary school within Keta was established in 1979, with the old block of one classroom dilapidated, a new block of 3 classrooms has been constructed.
During the participatory mapping |
GUTSURA, THE FORGOTTEN FLOODED COMMUNITY BY THE ZAMFARA RIVER
The team with Tukur at the New Gutsura Site |
As the rains will soon be here again, this village will be left with building more resilience to prevent flooding, except the government, international aid agencies, private companies build houses and important social amenities for this ailing community, or help them build a stronger embankment to prevent the next flooding, that is always experience due to the rise in water level from the Mashayar Dantudu River.
THE FUTURE OF DISASTER RISK RESPONSE IN THE WAKE OF THE DIGITAL HUMANITARIAN SPACE
Angela Oduor leading the Mapping Stream session at the iHub |
ICCM 2013 participants at the UNON conference room |
Participants at the Digital Humanitarian Summit |
HOPE FOR ARTISANAL SMALL SCALE MINERS IN ZAMFARA?
Artisanal Small Scale Miners at Sunke Zamfara Nigeria |
Cross section of participants at the Stakeholders meeting in Fulbe Villa, Gusau, Zamfara |
DANGLING THE CARROT: THE EMERGENCE OF MORE FRAGILE STATES IN WEST AFRICA
Just this morning, hundreds of people have started fleeing the northern Nigeria state of Borno to neighbouring Niger, Chad and Mali. Apparently, the government of Nigeria just announced a state of emergencyin 3 states – Yobe, Adamawa and Borno, where the popular terrorist group – Boko Haram resides. Niger, Chad and Mali seem to be a big suspect. How? – Niger has a awful 81.8% of her population in severe poverty; Northern Mali is still struggling with war, and also has 68.4% of her population in poverty; the story of the later – Chad has been disturbing in recent times, with the shrinking of her only resource – the lake, perhaps due to climate change.
(View Paul Collier TEDx Talk below)
MONITORING AND EVALUATION SYSTEMS: CAN THEY PROMOTE TRANSPARENCY AND ACCOUNTABILITY IN WEST AFRICA?
Consequently, every program needs the information to answer three vital questions: “what could constitute success in addressing problems?”; “How will we know success when we achieve it”? And can achievements and its processes be shared in the public domain”? Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) systems can help everyone understand which programs are working, which are not, which can be scaled up, and which could be abandoned, but how it answers the questions in these West African countries remain farfetched!
Problems of the Country highlighted in Red and Solutions in Green. How True? |
No doubt, external and internal stakeholders should have a clear sense of status of projects, programs and policies. But, is the ability to demonstrate positive results able to increase popular and political support in West Africa? The truth is that most citizens do not have public confidence in the leadership of their various states. Even, if they publish positive results, citizens believe the outcomes are been doctored to portray “a breath of fresh air” which evaporates at dawn.
SOCIAL MEDIA AND CREATIVE TECHNOLOGIES: A RECIPE TO #SAVEBAGEGA
In october 2012, when the Follow The Money Team were developing their website, little did they know that the hashtag #SaveBagega was going to reach a staggering 600,000 people from over 100 countries. Consequently, putting more pressure on the government of Nigeria to attend to the urgent need of this ailing community.
Screenshot (Jan 26, 2013) of a hashtracking report on the hashtag #SaveBagega |
Bagega is a village community in Zamfara, Northern Nigeria, where 1,500 children awaits urgent medical attention for lead poisoning. “All we had in mind was to create a web platform integrated with social media tools, and write reports (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Storify) that could amplify the voice of these helpless communities” said Hamzat Lawal, co – creator of the non-profit group that advocates, tracks, and visualizes aid meant for local communities.
Everyday millions of hash tags are been created on Twitter for different reasons. “We were looking for a hash tag that could easily be related with the ailing community, and since this advocacy was directed to saving these children in Bagega, we decided to create #SaveBagega” affirmed Hamzat
Screenshot (October, 2012) of the Follow the Money Website |
I have it on good authority that Mr President has approved the immediate release of funds to re-mediate Bagega.@yusufismail1 @xeenarh
— Sen. Bukola Saraki (@bukolasaraki) January 25, 2013
Recently, I was talking with some colleagues on how the internet not only make information open, but how it has become “a house of history” in 30 years from now, the children of Bagega will be opportune to read what struck their community, some years back, and what their leaders did to save them!
How much went to Federal Ministry of Mines and Steel? They said we will get that information before next meeting to #SaveBagega
— Follow The Money (@4lowthemoney) February 12, 2013
.“We will get back to you before the next meeting and try to make it public” says the representative of MMSD. All these were posted on their tweet handles for the world to see. On February 26, 2013, the MMSD announced in a press release that 158.3 million was received by their parastatal to encourage safer mining in Zamfara.
HOW YOUNG NIGERIANS ADDED THOUSANDS OF PLACES TO GOOGLE MAPMAKER
Group Photo of participants at the training |
Okwunwa Godwin (NEMA), Uzowulu Williams(NEMA and Fawole Yetunde(FCDA) joining to Map Wuse |
Participants adding points from paper maps to Map Maker at Tetrazzini, Conakry Street, Wuse Zone 3 |
AbujaMapUp Team at the Millennium Park |
MAKING DATA OPEN FOR DEVELOPMENT: THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT IN NIGERIA
What could have kept one glued to the Television on the 1st day of the year? Perhaps, the English Premier League, The Big Bang Theory , or Grey’s Anatomy. None of them! It was Platform, showing on the “Largest television network in Africa” – Nigeria Television Authority, popularly known as NTA on Tuesday, January 1, 2013 at 11 – 12 pm. Interestingly, the guest was Honourable Matthew Omegara, chairman, House on committee on Reform on Government, while the topic – The Freedom of Information (FOI) Act kept me glued. The Freedom of Information Act, that has been on the front burner since 12 years ago was signed into law by the President, Goodluck Jonathan on May 28, 2011. The House of Representatives passed the Bill on February 24, 2011, while the Senate passed it on March 16, 2011. Both House harmonized it, and was passed by both chambers on May 26, 2011. As this act can deliver Nigeria from the shackles of corruption and accountability, 19 months after it has been signed into law, analysts say there is still a lot that is missing in the Act.
Several times, it has been said that, getting citizens to participate in issues that concern nation building isn’t an easy task, owing to the grave loss of public confidence in the government. By the way, one may have asked, where are the CSO’s, media houses, investigative journalist that agitated for the FOI Act? They aren’t sleeping, Right to Know has been monitoring the FOI Act, how it is been implemented, and perhaps sensitizing the public; The Media Rights Agenda, has also been holding workshops on the FOI Act for CSOs. What does this mean for Open Data and Open Development in Nigeria? It means Startups like BudgIT and Follow the Money could use this medium in tracking aid flows from the government to communities, at least to an extent, which could have never been achieved before.
The Honorable mentioned how they have started the sensitization in regions of the country with support of UKAid, CIDA and UNDP. Sometimes in December last year, I attended the Ministry of Information sensitization on the FOI Act at the Nicon Luxury. Awareness and education on the FOI Act wouldn’t stop, however stories of how organizations have started enforcing the Act should be told, lessons learnt can then be used in decision making. In all, it was a pleasure, listening to those that make our laws on TV; the truth is that at long term, enforcing the Act can help in making information public, and also tracking funds that flow from the government to communities!