On December 9 every year, the international community observes Anti-corruption day to create awareness about the negative impacts of corruption on nations and the need to fight it.
This year’s International Anti-Corruption Day with the theme ‘UNCAC at 20: Uniting the World Against Corruption focuses on the crucial link between anti-corruption and peace, security, and development. And in commemoration of the day, Dataphyte is introducing Anfani, an innovative platform that links public procurement data from the federal and state governments with beneficial ownership information of government contractors. The platform’s unique name is from the Yoruba word for ‘benefit,” and it is designed as an open-source platform to help journalists, civil society, and anti-graft organisations follow the money and investigate the political and financial connections existing within the public procurement and audit processes across different levels of government.
Dataphyte has, in the last two years, been at the forefront of providing access to data through civic technology, data-driven storytelling, and capacity building to drive fiscal transparency and accountability, and effective service delivery across all the regions of Nigeria, all of which as is crucial to improving development outcomes and promoting Peace and Security. Anfani is yet another step in advancing this work.
Nigeria is ranked 154th out of 180 nations in Transparency International’s (TI) 2021 Corruption Perception Index (CPI). This is evidence of the endemic corruption that plagues the country from the frontlines of national governance to the subnational levels.
Anfani is an intervention that leverages open data and connects the crucial dots between procurement and beneficial ownership for journalists, civic actors and anti-graft organisations to better fight corruption by exposing it and punishing offenders.
Describing the platform, Joshua Olufemi, the Founder and Executive Director of Dataphyte, stated that the platform offers a tripartite benefit to accountability and anti-corruption stakeholders. First is the transparency on corporate entities servicing the public contracting sector in Nigeria. Second, it provides social network visualisation of the who-is-who in several sectors, including minerals and energy resource exploration industry, and lastly, it is a tool for connecting the dots within organized crime and illicit financial flow structures.