Nigerian initiative wins Council of Europe’s Democracy Innovation Award
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Follow the Money, an initiative of Connected Development, focused on advocating, visualizing and tracking government spending and international aid in rural communities, has won the Council of Europe Democracy Innovation Award.
The award ceremony was held in Strasburg.
The Council of Europe’s Democracy Innovation Award is given by the Secretary-General each year to the World Forum for Democracy’s most popular initiative, which was presented in the labs, voted upon by the Forum participants.
The award is an original work of the artist Ilana Isehayek.
The Forum brought together 2,000 participants and 250 speakers from all over the world to discuss information and democracy this year.
Follow the Money defeated the finalists AlGOVrithm, ePaństwo Foundation/CRTA of Poland and Le Drenche of France through a vote by delegates to clinch the award.
Hamzat Code, the Chief Executive Officer of Connected Development, while reacting to the award on Twitter, expressed excitement over the world recognition of the initiative as a tool for democratic engagements in ensuring accountability.
“Follow The Money won the @coe Democracy Award 2019 in France and received by my colleague who leads our communications @preshest. I am super excited that our Nigeria home-grown initiative have been recognized as a tool for democratic engagements in ensuring accountability”
Follow The Money is an online community for passionate young people who are holding the government accountable in order to increase government service delivery in Africa.
The initiative is a network of activists, social workers, lawyers, journalists, development consultants, researchers and data analysts, that have signed up on its social mobility platform. It uses media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, as well as mainstream media, to amplify the voices of marginalized communities.