The West Africa Contract Monitoring Network, in collaboration with the World Bank, has released a West Africa Contract Monitoring publication towards improving the transparency and accountability of public procurement and contracting systems in Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone.
The publication looked at Contract Transparency in the Road and School Building Sectors in Ghana; Context, the Projects, Challenges, Results, Outcomes and Lessons Learned. In Liberia, it examined the Effectiveness of Procurement Processes in Waste Management and How They Affect Communities Across Monrovia; the Problem, Context, Addressing the Waste Management Problem of the City of Monrovia through the Liberia Country Coalition’s Activities, Challenges, Results, Outcomes and Lessons Learned.
The publication also looked into Fostering Multistakeholder Engagement for Effective Public Procurement in Nigeria; The Nigeria Project, Tasks Implemented, Challenges, Results and Lessons Learned. The Sierra Leone analysis examined the Monitoring World Bank-Funded Public Contracts and Procurement; The Problem, The Sierra Leone Project, Tasks Implemented, Challenges, Results and Lessons Learned.
In 2010, the World Bank’s Africa Core Operations Services and the World Bank Institute (WBI) conceptualized the West Africa Contract Monitoring Network (WACMN) to strengthen the capacity of civil society organizations (CSOs) in four West African countries namely, Ghana, Nigeria, Liberia, and Sierra Leone in the monitoring of public procurement and contracting systems.
WACMN was expected to: build a regional network of stakeholders committed to moving the agenda of contract monitoring forward on the regional level across the four countries; establish sustainable monitoring coalitions of diverse stakeholders in each of the four target countries will continue to oversee contracting processes after the program ends; and contribute to improved transparency and accountability of procurement/contracting processes in priority sectors/projects.
The regional coordinator for WACMN was the Ghana Anti-Corruption Coalition (GACC), which worked with the various country coalitions made up of representatives from CSOs, the private and public sectors and the media.
The Country Convening Organizations were the Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII) for Ghana, the Public Private Development Center (PPDC) for Nigeria, the Center for Transparency and Accountability in Liberia (CENTAL) for Liberia, and the Society for Democratic Initiative (SDI) for Sierra Leone.
Each country coalition decided on which projects it would monitor. The Nigeria Country Coalition Members/Organizations were Public and Private Development Centre (PPDC; convening institution), Media Rights Agenda (MRA), Abimbola Akosile (Investigative Journalist), Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP), Centre for Organizational and Professional Ethics (COPE-AFRICA), Initiative for Food, Environment and Health Society (IFEHS); Nigerian Society of Engineers (NSE).
