South Africa bought $66 000 worth of toxic weapons from the United States in 2007. That’s more than Sierra Leone’s rather inexplicable $47 000 purchase, but at least less than Egypt’s scary $2,25-million.
Described as toxological agents, these authorised sales include chemical agents, biological agents and associated equipment.
You might also be interested to know that South African Tourism has spent $55-million on promotions over the past decade in the US. The University of Johannesburg forked out $56 000 to a company called Ruder Finn for public relations in the US over 2006/07.
Information is also available on 256 vendors currently contracted by USAid around Africa, as well as the 2009 financial disclosure reports by Johnnie Carson, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs. His form describes his job as National Intelligence officer for Africa.
All this data comes courtesy of the website Ujima, unveiled at the Highway Africa conference in Grahamstown last week. Coming soon to this online resource will be the names and numbers of African recipients of British government funding.
It’s a timely resource ahead of the International Right to Know Day, which is marked worldwide on September 28.
The team behind the Ujima website comprises New York Times journalist Ron Nixon and colleague Steven Miller. They’re part of the Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) consortium in the US, and they’ve linked up with Sally Stapleton of the Great Lakes Media Institute.
Their information comes from publicly accessible information in the US, which has much greater transparency and electronic data availability than most places in Africa. The money for the website comes from IRE, the Open Society Institute and the Ford Foundation.
Inspiration for the initiative arose from a workshop on investigative reporting in Rwanda a year ago, when local journalists were exposed to information about their countries contained in documents in the US.
According to the Ujima site, one journalist said such information would be impossible to get in the country, adding that it would be nice if there was an easy way to obtain information like this from not just Rwanda, but other African countries.
The name Ujima means ”collective work” in Kiswahili, and the team’s dream is that many people will help identify information that can be uploaded on to the site, with monthly updates.
Underlying the project is a recognition, according to the site, that reverse transparency can kick in for information-poor African countries via information that is held by foreign governments, donors, international organisations and other agencies.
In an age of globalisation and strong standards of disclosure in developed democracies, the value for African journalists is being able to find otherwise unknown national information in a one-stop online shop.
Meanwhile, back in South Africa, government last month tabled the Protection of Personal Information Bill, with mixed effects on the availability of information here.
The law restricts the collection and use of individuals personal information such as that regarding religion, health, sex life, race, political persuasion and criminal behaviour. To strengthen rights to privacy, the Bill envisages an Information Protector Regulator, who will oversee adherence to a code of conduct by agencies which collect and use personal information.
While this legitimately restricts the availability of personal information, it could help release public information.
Thus Alison Tilley, of the Open Democracy Advice Centre (ODAC), hopes the regulator will also be empowered, through an amendment to the Promotion of Access to Information Act, to order the release of public information in cases of official obstructionism.
On the other hand, there are questions about how the draft law could specifically affect the media. In its current form, the Bill expressly says its restrictions do not apply to the processing of personal information for exclusively journalistic purposes.
That means it would still be possible to report on whether a minister has a drinking problem or whether a kwaito star is defaulting on child maintenance.
But there is a proviso: the exemption on using people’s private data by the media is limited to ”responsible parties who are subject to, by virtue of office, employment or profession, a code of ethics that provides adequate safeguards for the protection of personal information”.
There’s a lot potential trouble in that qualification.
Meantime, ODAC is going ahead with its annual rusty padlock awards for South African government bodies that chronically fail a test of responsiveness on information disclosure. Last year, in a sample of 42 of an estimated 800 government bodies, a total of seven municipalities and four provincial premiers offices shared the dishonour.
ODAC’s naming and shaming for 2009 will be revealed on their website on October 21.
And in the background, the domestic information game is changing the light of websites such as Ujima.