Most investment pledges in extractive industries are exaggerated - Panos
By Chiwoyu Sinyangwe in Grahamstown, South Africa
Tue 03 Sep. 2013, 14:00 CAT
MOST investment pledges being made by foreign multinationals into extractive industries are exaggerated and there is nothing for communities, says Panos Institute of Southern Africa Zambia Chapter.
Panos Institute of Southern Africa Zambia Chapter communications manager Vusumuzi Sifile said most communities lacked the capacity to police investors to ensure their pledges commensurate with what was realised on the ground.
He said Panos Institute was working to increase capacity of communities to hold policy makers and investors accountable for planned investments.
"There are a number of major mining projects. Every year, there is a new mining project coming in but in most cases, you find that you are told that on paper there are a lot of interesting figures but if you go on the ground, you will find that there isn't anything for the communities," Sifile said of the project being piloted in Zambia and Mozam bique.
He said this during a panel discussion on "The role of social media in elections and accountability" at the just-ended 17th Highway Africa Conference at Rhodes University.
Sifile said there was need for massive investment in communities to empower natives to track and ensure they benefit from natural resources being extracted from their areas.
"So, we have been focusing on empowering those communities to demand for a fair share of whatever is realised from the extraction of those resources," he said.
"On public accountability, we have been working around education, agriculture...empowering local communities in tracking the budget so that whatever is allocated to them reaches them."
Sifile said despite recent growth in the use of social media in Africa and the growing availability of data-enabling mobile phones, radio still remained the most widely used and accessed tool for communities to hold leaders accountable and participate in their development trajectory.
"The majority of the poor and marginalised do not have access to internet," said Sifike. "And that is the reason, as Panos, we embracing social media but we realise most of the people that we are targeting do not have access to social media tools. Someone may have access to data network phone but they don't have the clue how they are supposed to use that phone to effectively communicate. Radio is still the most widely preferred forinformation sources and we are fortunate that Zambia has more than 60 registered radio stations."
Labels: PANOS
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2,000 journalists to be trained on monitoring government expenditure
Time Posted: February 6, 2013 1:52 pm
The Zambia Institute of Mass Communication (ZAMCOM), in conjunction with PANOS Institute Southern Africa, will soon embark on a project to train 2,000 journalists to monitor government expenditure in the health and education sectors.
ZAMCOM Director Oliver Kanene disclosed that the journalists will focus on how government funds on health and education infrastructure were spent.
Mr. Kanene said the reporters, who will all have to be based in Lusaka, will be empowered with smart phones that will enable them to access information on how much money government was spending on various projects in the two sectors.
He was speaking during a community radio station information and communication technologies (ICTs) training workshop for journalists in Lusaka today.
And Zambia Information and Communications Technology Authority (ZICTA) Director for Legal and Regulatory Affairs, Thomas Malama, said government and all members of the public play an important role in positively exploiting ICT for the betterment of society.
Mr. Malama said it was important for journalists to be acquainted with ICT as it was the most efficient information delivery vehicle.
He disclosed that ZICTA has so far embarked on a project to put up towers in several areas to improve access to internet services.
And PANOS Institute Southern Africa Executive Director Lillian Kiefer explained that the workshop was meant to enhance the ability of journalists in fulfilling their responsibilities using ICT tools.
Ms. Kiefer said community radio stations were an important tool in engaging government and communities on various matters.
ZANIS
Labels: CORRUPTION, JOURNALISM, PANOS, ZAMCOM
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Panos calls for engagement of the poor in budget tracking
By Misheck Wangwe in Kitwe
Mon 12 Nov. 2012, 10:00 CAT
PANOS Institute Southern Africa says engaging the poor in national budget tracking and implementation will significantly enhance accountability of national resources.
In an interview, Panos Institute Southern Africa (PSAf) executive director Lilian Chigona said the engagement of the poor in tracking the national budget implementation in communities was critical to fostering meaningful economic development.
She said without a deliberate effort to engage the poor and marginalised in society in budget tracking, the poor would remain sidelined with no platform for engagement.
"Local communities have an important role to play in the budgeting process at various levels and in tracking the use of resources allocated for them in the budget, but they can only do so if they have platforms for expressing views. When a budget is passed, community members need to be empowered with adequate information and skills to understand what has been allocated to them and for what use so that they can actively participate in fostering accountability of public resources," Chigona said.
She said communities could effectively monitor the use of their resources if they know what had been allocated to them.
"It's not adequate to get community voices of before budgets are approved so that they advocate for certain issues, and then leave them out when budgets are being implemented," Chigona said.
She, however, said it was gratifying that Zambia, like any other developing country, was striving to improve its governance systems and structures and had developed several programmes aimed at promoting efficient and effective use of public resources across all sectors.
Chigona said it was not enough to talk about citizen engagement without deliberately making efforts to empower people to participate in resource tracking and other governance processes.
"Unless people have access to quality information and have a platform for engagement, this will remain a dream. As PSAf, we believe that since the targeted beneficiaries for all these public resources allocated to various departments at community level are communities, it is only right that they should be empowered to actively monitor and track the flow of budget implementation," said Chigona.
Labels: BUDGET, CORRUPTION, LILIAN CHIGONA, PANOS
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