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Ujima is a Swahili word that means cooperation or collaborative work. But Ujima is also the name of a very interesting new project that was unveiled just a few days ago at the Highway Africa in Grahamstown. Their founders - veteran New York Times journalists Ron Nixon and Stephen Miller, and the former photo editor at the Associated Press, Sally Stapleton - presented it in several sessions, and I had the chance to attend one of them almost by accident. You see, since the project was described in the programme as "investigative reporting for Africa" I thought it would be one of those projects by Western organizations around specialized trainings for African journalists and media capacity building. But although the Ujima Project is part of the Great Lakes Media Institute which does some of that, Ujima turned out to be something completely different from what I had expected. And I must admit that it blew my mind.
This is how they define themselves on their website:
The Ujima Project is a new experiment in journalistic transparency. The Web site offers African journalists, nongovernmental organizations and others seeking factual data access to information that is not readily available in many African countries. The project operates on the premise of reverse transparency, taking database, documents and other information from donor countries -- The United States, European Union, for example -- and providing it in an easily seachable manner. Want to know what NGOs are doing in your country? The Ujima Project can provide some of the answers. Want to know how much your government is spending to influence policy in the United States or to promote its image abroad? The Ujima Project can assist with that as well.
So it's basically an invaluable treasure chest of data on the flow of money to and from Africa, mostly related to aid but not only. The idea is to make relevant information that is not readily available in Africa more accessible to the people it affects - its own citizens. During the presentation in Grahamstown Nixon quoted the example of Burundi's budget, half of which comes from external aid, yet most Burundians don't know anything about this money, such as the total amount, how it's supposed to be used, etc. Which is a frequent paradox in Africa. However, this kind of data can often be accessed in donor countries mostly due to open record laws. If you know how, that is, and most people don't.
Being journalists themselves, the hope of the founders of Ujima when they created the database was so that African journalists could use it as a starting point to write about corruption in the in their countries and to hold their governments more accountable. Or since the database is open for anyone to access, it can be used by whoever else is interested in it. In this manner, it is similar to WikiLeaks, but it is initially based upon records that are already public (albeit quite buried) knowledge.
Since the Ujima database was just launched, right now it contains only records from the US, but during their presentation we were told that very soon they'll offer information from other countries as well -such as the UK (DFID) and other EU countries. In fact, they're hoping to receive contributions from all over the world to greatly expand their sources giving a more complete and nuanced picture of the money trail in Africa.
It's quite important to emphasize that it also tracks contributions from Africa. For example, right now they're focusing mostly on Western donors to Africa or on African countries spending money with Western PR companies, but they said it would be great to have information on the flow of money within Africa. That's why they called the project Ujima, because it's everybody's responsibility to increase transparency and accountability by working together.
The database currently has four main sections: Lobbying, Global Fund, USAID, Weapons Sales and other miscellaneous documents. Each section in turn has a list of all the African countries, and honestly, they are all extremely enlightening to browse. For example, in the Global Fund section (an organization that has spent more than $11.4 billion in only 6 years) can be searched by disease - HIV/Aids, malaria or tuberculosis. After browsing those for a while one has to wonder why the progress in fighting these diseases has been so meager looking at the piles of money thrown at them.
But probably my favorite section is 'Lobbying', covering information about lobbyists hired by foreign governments and organizations to influence U.S. policy on issues such as trade, taxation, foreign aid, appropriations, human rights and national security. Looking at the records in this section closely we immediately find suspicious things such as this one from Congo Brazzaville:
In case it's too small to read, the services of the 3rd company listed were contracted by the Office of the President of the Republic of Congo through the first company on the list, supposedly for an amount of $0.00 (the intermediary company did get $830,000 though). Similarly, looking at the records of Gabon, we can see that most of the companies hired by President Omar Bongo seem to have worked for him for free. One of them in particular caught my attention, Barron-Birrell Inc., since they appear to have done work not only for Gabon but also for other reputable governments, including the two Congos and Zimbabwe. And always for free, of course. What an altruistic group. Also, a quick Google search reveals that one of the founders of that firm, David Barron, is a Republican (shocking, I know) and that he "has led many Congressional tours to Africa" and "has also played an important role in establishing the new national park system in Gabon (West Africa)".
Pulling a thread on the Ujima database can take you to the most unexpected dark places, where dirty secrets are kept, and show you the most unlikely bed partners. And that's what's so fascinating about it, and so outrageous at the same time. I truly hope that many journalists will feel the same way and make good use of all that info.
Today, looking for mentions of Project Ujima, I've come accross two articles about it by other people who were at Highway Africa. Check them out:
Today Jon Gosier of Appfrica has posted an audio interview with Ujima founder Ron Nixon as part of his Appfricast series.
As all my friends know, I'm a huge fan of The Onion, America's Finest News Source, which is always more accurate than real news. Lately, I've also become a big fan of the excellently middle-named Michael Bear Kleinman's Humanitarian Relief blog on Change.org, and even more so since he posted a great video from The Onion about ensuring that Darfur knows how much Western celebrities are concerned about them. You can see the video below, but Michael's post has a compilation of other awesome Africa or humanitarian relief themed headlines such as "I'm Totally Gonna Get Laid on this Humanitarian Mission to Uganda".
