Accountability

I've been struggling with the topic of accountability for a long time now. The two conflicting schools of thought:
- make the process easy enough to maintain and create something that is not overly taxing on local community partners
- create a plan for identifying potential corruption and eliminate as much as possible

I attended the Global Engagement Summit 2009 at Northwestern two weeks ago. Our closing keynote was non other than Premal Shah, the president of Kiva! I was able to ask him two questions. The first was how he, in Kiva, used accountability metrics. Second I asked about overhead. Both of his answers related to transparency. Kiva randomly checks up on the people who ask for loans and the NGOs and then has a section of their website that posts all of the corrupt information they find. Brilliant. Instead of trying to hide or questioning how to divulge the information, they are blunt about the problems. Posting to the web simultaneously discredits the guilty parties, preventing them from being able to repeat their mistake, and keeps the public informed. The transparency and trust are crucial between Kiva and the donors. To the second question, he recommended the Kiva way again, after a person signs up to donate or loan money, they ask for a percentage of the donation to go to Kiva's overhead. While this overhead amount is not guaranteed, Kiva has enjoyed a relatively high return using this method. It's a lot to consider.

From my conversations with people who run NGOs, people in developing countries who are our community partners, and fellow MIT students, I have come up with three methods for accountability that I think cover most situations:
1. After a person receives his/her new wheelchair, the workshop is responsible for taking a picture and sending it to the website.
2. Use NGOs and potentially Pan African Wheelchair Association to do regional follow-ups a month after a person receives a wheelchair.
3. While abroad, Worldwide Mobility members will check up on random people and post the results to the web, likely either on this blog or on the actual website. (Thank you Kiva!)

Do you have experience in accountability in Africa? I'd love to hear from you!