Follow the Money

Connected Development

Established in 2012, Follow The Money’s mission is to influence social change and disrupt the status quo by setting up social accountability models to track government spending and international aid, expose corruption, ensure implementation, and reveal to the public how effective local social development projects are.

Through community outreach, Follow The Money empowers grassroots organizations and individuals to question elected officials on accountability. This is followed by the facilitation of town hall meetings – involving community stakeholders, contractors and officials to discuss project implementation deficiencies, thereby bridging the information gap and strengthening local capacities on social accountability.

Follow The Money’s social accountability initiative is one of the most effective on the African continent, having tracked over 10 million USD and having impacted the lives of over 3 million living in rural communities. In 2015, this initiative won One Africa Award for transformative efforts working towards actualizing the SDGs.

"Winning an UN SDG Action Award has been a life changing moment for the initiative and team. Not only has it empowered us to strengthen our internal governance structure, but most importantly the Award has enhanced our credibility in holding governments to account and fostering transparency."

Hamzat B. Lawal, Founder

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What is new with this initiative since winning an UN SDG Action Award?

At the time Follow The Money won an UN SDG Action Award in 2019, this initiative had footprints in four African countries. With the recognition providing greater exposure, Follow The Money expanded to an additional 5 countries in Africa and has since witnessed a growing interest in the Americas and Asia. Locally, the initiative has also expanded to 36 Nigerian States. Country chapters also grew dramatically in terms of membership and visibility, thereby strengthening internal governance structures which hold governments to account, improving public service delivery in their communities, and enabling the initiative to access more grants and build up partnerships.

At the 2019 World Forum for Democracy, the Council of Europe awarded Follow The Money with the Democracy Innovation Award for their work on democratic engagements and ensuring public accountability. The Forum brought together 2,000 participants and 250 speakers from all over the world to discuss participation and democracy.

Recently, Follow The Money participated the COVID-19 Transparency and Accountability Project (CTAP) to track funds in seven African countries, which resulted in exposing misallocations of COVID-19 funds, demanding accountability, and ensuring service delivery.