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Stakeholder Engagement

Accountability to affected populations

  • 17 September 2024

How Civil Society Organizations and journalists
can engage in informed and responsible monitoring
of public procurement infrastructure projects.

Background information

Project overview
From November 2020 to January 2024, Partnership for Transparency (PTF) participated in a project to enhance the capacity of civil society organizations (CSOs) and journalists to engage in informed and responsible monitoring of public procurement infrastructure projects.

Participants
The project was conducted in partnership with the African Institute of Corporate Citizenship/Integrity Platform (AICC/IP), the National Construction Industry Council/CoST- Infrastructure Transparency Initiative Malawi (NCIC/CoST Malawi) and in association with CoST Transparency Initiative International Secretariat (CoST IS) based in the United Kingdom.

Project champion

Project implementation was supervised by the CoST-Malawi Multistakeholder Group (MSG). The Champion of CoST-Malawi MSG is His Excellency, the President of Malawi, Dr. Lazarus McCarthy Chakwera.

Project purpose

The project aims to enhance the transparency, fairness, and effectiveness of the public procurement process for infrastructure in Malawi through training and empowering civil society actors and investigative journalists to understand and monitor public procurement transactions.

Project objectives

  • A sufficient number of CSOs will have been trained to monitor public infrastructure procurement and budget expenditures,
  • Civil Society Organizations will have demonstrated the capacity to monitor public infrastructure procurement and to analyze budget expenditures in public infrastructure, and
  • The Information Platform in Public Infrastructure Procurement (IPPI) will have been fully operationalized.

Project communication
The project draws on CoST-Malawi’s award-winning communication strategies, including working with journalist organizations, such as Misa-Malawi. Key elements of the strategy involve engagement with mainstream media (radio, TV and newspapers) and social media and televised debates on infrastructure development.

Project achievement examples

1. Adequately equipping Civil Society Organizations

  • Two series of training courses were conducted, one on advocacy using open data and another on public procurement, targeting selected CSOs in each of the regions in the country.
  • 140 representatives of CSOs and procuring entities have been trained.

2. Operationalizing the Information Platform in Public Infrastructure Procurement (IPPI)

  • Upgraded user-friendly IPPI was launched in July 2022 with software enhancements.
  • IPPI Malawi was officially accredited by the Open Contracting for Infrastructure Data Standards (OC4IDS).
  • The google analytics process was started to measure accessibility of people that have visited the website and downloaded.

Guests

Donal OLeary 300px

Senior Advisor
Transparency International

Rodney Kumsinda

Trainer for CSOs on
Public Procurement in Infrastructure

+27 11 717 3300
info@goodgovernance.academy

Wits Business School, 2 St Davids Pl, St Andrew Rd, Parktown, 

Johannesburg, 2193, South Africa

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© 2024 Good Governance Academy

Donal O'Leary

Senior Advisor, Transparency International

Donal has over forty years’ experience working in infrastructure, primarily the water and energy sectors.

 

He has worked in approximately 40 countries in Africa, the Americas, Asia and Europe. This included more than twenty years experience with the World Bank, focusing on projects in the water and energy sectors, many with major environmental and procurement requirements.


For the last 18 years, he has worked as a volunteer senior advisor with Transparency International (TI), focusing on governance, anticorruption, capacity development and procurement, with a particular focus on the water sector

 

He is a founding member of the Water Integrity Network (WIN), which advocates for integrity in the water and sanitation sectors to reduce corruption risks and improve services, for the benefits of all.

 

Since 2013, he has represented TI on the Steering Committee of the OECD Water Governance Initiative (WGI) – an international forum that addresses water governance issues, where mutual learning and experience-sharing can take place and where useful water governance practices can be identified and scaled up.

 

Over the last 7 years, Donal has worked as a volunteer advisor to the Partnership for Transparency (PTF) – a CSO based in Washington DC. On behalf of PTF, he managed the recently-completed project entitled ‘Strengthening the Capacity of CSOs to Promote Transparency and Accountability in Public Infrastructure Projects in Malawi‘, which has a major focus on infrastructure procurement, including the largest irrigation project in the country.

 

Donal has a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin. His dissertation was in the field of waater resources management.

Rodney Mitch Kumsinda

Trainer for CSOs on Public Procurement in Infrastructure

Education

  • MSc. In Construction Science, Texas A & M University USA, 1990
  • BSc. In Business Administration (Construction), Denver University: USA (Colorado) 1988
  • Diploma in Civil Engineering, University of Malawi, 1977

 

Membership in Professional Organizations

  • Associate Member, Chartered Institute of Arbitration, UK, 2009

 

Summary of Professional Experience and Qualifications

Rodney has more than 10 years developing training materials for training workshops on public procurement in infrastructure oriented towards CSOs and the media based in Malawi. He also has wide experience carrying out Assurance Studies for Construction Sector Transparency Initiative (CoST Malawi).

 

Relevant Assignments

  • Consultancy Services for Training CSOs on Public Procurement in Infrastructure in 2023: Developing training materials for training workshops on public procurement in infrastructure oriented towards CSOs and the media based in Malawi.
  • Consultancy Services for Post Procurement Review of World Bank Projects in 2021: Carry out Post Procurement Review of 22 projects under 8 Institutions throughout Malawi on which the Bank carried out a virtual audit.  The assignment therefore was to validate the virtual audit with physical verification including geo-tagged photographs.
  • Consultancy Services for Assurance Study for 2021 Construction Sector Transparency Initiative: Carry out Assurance study on 5 projects from different sectors including water, roads and agriculture projects where Government and Parastatal organizations are required to disclose data on public infrastructure projects so that information on the purpose, scope, costs and execution of projects is disseminated by the public in a timely and understandable manner so that the public can be informed and have a chance to interact with the relevant public authorities.
  • Consultancy Services for Assurance Study for 2017 Construction Sector Transparency Initiative: Carry out Assurance study on 33 projects from different sectors including water, roads health, and, energy and Mining projects where Government and Parastatal organizations are required to disclose data on public infrastructure projects so that information on the purpose, scope, costs and execution of projects is disseminated by the public in a timely and understandable manner so that the public can be informed and have a chance to interact with the relevant public authorities to seek more information and clarifications when and where appropriate.
  • Procurement of Management Agent for National Construction Industry Council Training Programme in 2003: Setting up a training unit at the NCIC funded by World Bank under Road Maintenance and Rehabilitation Project

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