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Elevating Local Knowledge for Sustainable Impact

By Sheena Adams and Nyema Richards Walking around Monrovia, Liberia it’s hard to escape Hipco music. From supermarkets and dress shops to small, battered radios attached to motorcycle taxis, the music floats all over the city. The genre combines Liberian Pidgin-English, called kolokwa, with high-BPM dance rhythms and also touches of reggae, hip hop and RnB. Dating back to the Liberian Civil War, it’s also a genre that tackles socio-political issues in the country, and is a means for young people to express themselves in a relatable, viral way. As a campaign tool, Hipco has proven to be a powerful vehicle for change. Arguably [...]

2020-08-14T11:16:39+00:0014th August 2020|

The Value of Translocal Networks

Written by Director for Growth and Operations, Jean Scrimgeour   The Accountability Lab (AL) started to demonstrate how governance can work for people by supporting creative solutions for accountability. Nine years later, the Lab has developed into a network of 9 country teams, 5 additional country partners and almost 110 team members. But AL is not, nor was it ever intended to be, an international non-government organisation (INGO).   Instead, we see ourselves as a translocal network, a collective of local organisations that have a shared purpose and understanding about the challenges we face and what we believe are the creative [...]

2024-03-12T07:40:19+00:0011th August 2020|

Celebrating Student Life and Recognizing Failure as Part of Learning

Admitting failure is often seen as a sign of weakness or of accepting defeat, which is why there is so much social stigma around it. At Accountability Lab, we want to change norms and perceptions around the notion of failure. We do this by providing people with a platform to speak honestly and openly about their failures while also sharing the learnings from their stories and recounting how they were able to overcome these failures.  This enables other participants to recognize their own patterns of dealing with failure, counters the stigma around failure and helps relieve some of the anxiety [...]

2022-11-10T06:46:26+00:0011th August 2020|

How WaterWide is Pushing for Clean Water for All in Nigeria

With the support of the Lab’s incubator program, Wilson Atumeyi’s WaterWide NPO is working hard to hold government authorities accountable for ensuring that even the most marginalized communities have safe drinking water. By Kibo Ngowi Growing up in Plateau State, Wilson Atumeyi learned from a young age that access to clean water was a pipe dream for many Nigerians. While he was in secondary school he and his classmates would often be sent to fetch water miles away from wells that had been sunk by farmers for the purpose of watering crops. One child would have to physically go down [...]

2020-07-31T11:40:08+00:0029th July 2020|

Road to Riyadh – Can the G20 Fight Corruption?

The G20 places an important emphasis on anti-corruption - but has a long way to go to understand the progress it is making on these issues; · Information is outdated, commitments can be vague, measurement is confused and tracking progress is difficult; · It is difficult to even understand what commitments have been made - check out Accountability Lab’s analysis here; · Going forwards the G20 should commit to very specific, simple commitments, proactive monitoring and greater transparency of its own processes. By Blair Glencorse & Sanjeeta Pant Background During the Toronto Summit in 2010, the G20 agreed to set up [...]

2023-02-16T14:36:09+00:0029th July 2020|

Government Accountability Explains Differing Pandemic Responses

The coronavirus health crisis has brought about deep challenges related to misinformation, governance and trust. In a webinar sponsored by the Center for Strategic International Studies on Wednesday, Accountability Lab panelists on the ground in South Africa, Mali and Nepal detailed how the pandemic is affecting government accountability and corruption. The Accountability Lab is a non-profit international project, which works to engage citizens in conversations surrounding civil service in nine countries. Citizens, civil society groups and public sector reformers across several countries are finding creative ways to rebuild trusted communication between states and their people, in the absence of effective [...]

2020-07-23T12:22:47+00:0023rd July 2020|

Open government & Covid-19 response – Stories from the Open Gov podcast

The Lab took part in an episode of the “Stories from the Open Gov” podcast hosted by Richard Pietro of Re:OpenGov, highlighting what governments need to do to hold their government accountable as countries navigate the Covid-19 pandemic. AL Director Blair Glencorse, AL Mexico Director Eva Sander, AL Nepal Director Narayan Adhikari and & AL Mali MEL Officer DoussoubaKonate shared their thoughts on how well their respective countries are doing when it comes to open government, inclusion and fact-checking. Listen to it here - https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/ep32-international-roundtable-accountability-lab-part/id1486351232?i=1000485593426

2020-07-23T11:36:02+00:0023rd July 2020|

Accountability Lab Liberia Awards Winners of the Rap2Rep Coronavirus Music

Monrovia – Accountability Lab Liberia has awarded Hellen Smith, an emerging gospel musical artist, as the winner of this year's Rap2Rep musical campaign – a special feature that places high emphasis on coronavirus awareness messaging. By J. H. Webster Clayeh Rap2Rep is a musical campaign organized by the Accountability Lab Liberia that began 2015. It is a campaign that gives local artists an opportunity to use music as a tool for social change. The campaign has built a network of Hipco (Liberian style of music) artists that includes musicians who produce socially conscious music and are passionate about using their voices [...]

2020-07-21T10:40:04+00:0021st July 2020|

Accountability Lab awards 2 Liberian artists

Accountability Lab has awarded two Liberian artists for winning its Rap2Rep musical campaign. Ms. Hellen Smith emerged as winner of the campaign, receiving a grand prize of US$ 300, while Andrew Horton came second, taking away US$ 200 at the award ceremony held on July 17, 2020, on Carey Street, Monrovia. By Lewis S. Teh Ms. Janet M. Kamara said Rap2Rep is a campaign that is held under the auspices of Accountability Lab since 2015, basically using music as a tool for social change. For the past four years the campaign has built an accountability hipco network that includes musicians [...]

2020-07-20T10:51:37+00:0020th July 2020|

Corruption is rife in the COVID-19 era. Here’s how to fight back

The pandemic has created conditions in which corruption can flourish; This can exacerbate and prolong the negative effects of this crisis; Here are three ways to start tackling this issue today. By Tim Hanstad. The global pandemic has public health experts and medical providers around the world working overtime. And so, it seems, are profiteers. Even before the pandemic, an estimated $455 billion of the $7.35 trillion spent annually on healthcare worldwide was lost to fraud and corruption. Today, as governments are ramping up pandemic response spending to unprecedented levels and shovelling it out of the door with understandable urgency and desperation, [...]

2020-07-16T10:43:17+00:0016th July 2020|
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