Fighting corruption: Project To Empower Citizens Check Accountability Of Council Funds Launched

A project aimed at empowering citizens with skills to checking the accountability and transparency in the execution of budgets of councils in their areas of origin has been launched in Yaounde. 

The project dubbed Cameroon-Open Participatory Budget (COPB) was launched in at the premises of the Yaounde VI council Friday 5 March 2021 under the theme “Local governance and interactive opportunities between municipal authorities and citizens”.

The one year project to cost some 72 000 USD is funded by the French Embassy of in Cameroon through the Innovative Projects from Civil Societies and Coalitions of Actors (PISCCA). It is implemented in partnership with the Cameroon Network of Human Rights Organisatins (CNHRO) and the Cameroon Community Media Network, CCMN.

As explained by the representative of the CEO of AfroLeadership – a civil society organization with interest in decentralization, local and fiscal governance, the COPB project will run in the 22 municipalities found in the Centre, Littoral, West and South West regions aims at promoting budget literacy and citizen participation to budget processes. 

The project will give opportunity to citizens to access budget information, monitor budget design and implementation in their municipalities, impart capacities on how to use open data, do budget analysis/investigation and social monitoring, and then tell stories base on budget evidences, the experts disclosed. 

“COPB platform makes budget data available to every citizens in a simple, visual, machine readable format so that to increase data literacy and budget literacy for all the citizens everywhere in Cameroon. COPB is a first stage of an initiative that envisions to address all 374 local governments in Cameroon in years to come after this first phase,” said the representative of the CEO of AfroLeadership. 

The project has so far received the blessings of the International Association of  Francophone Mayors (AIMF), the Cameroon Community Driven Participatory Program (PNDP), as well as support from the Ministry of Decentralization and Local Development, the Global Initiative for Fiscal Transparency (GIFT).

The national coordinator of CCMN, Rose Obah who doubles as one of the implementers of the project said the initiative will enable the locals be part of the day-to-day running and supervision of their various councils and open room for more transparency, accountability and responsibility on the part of Mayors. 

Participants at the launched saluted the organisers of the project and called on them to make the training more frequent so as to enable them transfer the knowledge to others in the society.