Working with Sauti East Africa and Trade Mark East Africa, GI-ACE created a video with testimony from cross border women traders on the impacts of corruption and COVID. The video was integrated in workshops and the OECD talk as a catalyst for a broader discussion on “COVID & Corruption: Impacts and Lessons for Small-Scale Cross Border Trade in East Africa”.
Over the last two years of our GI-ACE programming you may have come to the site to read a blog, find out about one of our events, or perhaps read a recent research paper or policy brief. If you are receiving this newsletter you probably have been happy to follow our work. And maybe you’ve understood that our research teams have been sharing insights on everything from beneficial ownership laws in Nigeria to ethics training in Bangladesh. But what have we – as the GI-ACE programmatic team – actually been doing with our communications and engagement throughout this time?
As projects begin to close out their research projects this June through the fall, we will be sharing how the GI-ACE programme as a whole has been testing and experimenting with a range of communication and engagement strategies. This month you’ll have a chance to see how the Cities of Integrity project has been using animation to engage Zambian planners; Gerhard Anders and Matthew Page will share how bringing together stakeholders from Nigeria and Malawi has helped them understand the practicality – and perceptions – of their recommendations; and we’ll show how larger scale programmatic initiatives like the Digital Library strive to make existing tools more accessible.
GI-ACE is comprised of 15 research projects. At the programme level – and in aspiring to make the projects more than the sum of their parts – we believe that through engagements and communications efforts, researchers can strengthen their relationships with practitioners, and more importantly, that these relationships will help create more effective anti-corruption interventions that will improve people’s lives.
We are excited to begin sharing our learnings with the larger community. We hope you will continue to engage with us, and see what we have been up to all this time.
The Cities of Integrity project will premiere its series of animated videos illustrating how corruption affects the field of urban planning and the consequences it has on cities and their populations on June 3rd, 9:00 EDT. These animations have been used in project workshops, social media, and in direct engagement with particular groups such as early career planners. The screening will be followed by a panel discussion with the animators, the research team, and a representative from the Zambian Institute of Planners.
Join Gerhard Anders and Matthew Page in From Research to Policy: the ACE Journey of Impact on June 9th, 9:00 EDT, in conversation with project leads and government stakeholders. They will share lessons learned from recent private sessions in Nigeria and Malawi where Anders and Page presented research findings on the efficacy of law enforcement practices to senior policymakers and law enforcement officials.
Coming up on June 18th, 8:00 EDT, a panel debate between Heather Marquette, Jonathan Cushing, and Leslie Holmes at the ICRN Forum 2021. Aimed at bridging the gap between investigative journalism and academia in the fight against corruption, this is the conference’s sole public event. Don’t miss this conversation on how academia and journalism can cooperate in disseminating knowledge about corruption!
Register for our upcoming event on June 23rd, 9:00 EDT to officially launch the GI-ACE digital library. In this conversation with Matthew Stephenson and Steven Gawthorpe, we aim to explore the utility of the library and take users through a detailed walkthrough in order to share with academics and practitioners how to more effectively access key resources to strengthen their anti-corruption work.
Corruption, Gender and Small-Scale Cross Border Trade in East Africa: A Review
Jacqueline Klopp’s working paper on small-scale traders in East Africa offers insights from their research on border trade on the Kenya-Uganda border. The paper recommends higher level institutional reforms that clarify and reduce rules and tariffs, as well as suggests that incremental, gender sensitive bottom-up formalization is the most likely to have positive impacts on traders and trade.
Urbanisation & the Role of Professional Integrity in Urban Planning
The Cities of Integrity project believes that the fight against corruption requires a multi-sectoral approach in order to achieve meaningful results. To address this, the researchers, alongside the African Center for Cities, the Zambian Institute of Planners, and University of Cape Town came together for a qualitative action experiment workshop where planners and researchers shared insights on how to reduce corruption in the field.
RESEARCHER BLOGS
the latest from the ACE website
John Heathershaw and Tena Prelec break down the key recommendations from their recent working paper released with the National Endowment of Democracy, Reputational Laundering in the University Sector of Open Societies co-written alongside Alexander Cooley and Tom Mayne, in our most recent ACE blog post, Paying for a World Class Affiliation: Reputation laundering in universities.
Jan Meyer-Sahling, Christian Schuster, and Kim Sass Mikkelsen on the differential impact of managerial civil service reform on corruption in developing and OECD countries, emphasizing the importance of civil service reform and management practices to be tailored to fit their country contexts.
John Heathershaw and Tom Mayne on the threats to national security posed should the UK not take the influx of foreign dark money seriously.
THE ARCHIVES
articles, blogs, events
Jacqueline Klopp from Columbia University, Pallavi Roy from the SOAS ACE Programme, Sohela Nazneen from the Institute of Development Studies and Claudia Baez Camargo from the Basel Institute got together to talk about the challenges they’ve had in incorporating gender in research design, and why many research studies continue to shy away from approaching projects with a gendered lens.
Crossing borders is a strategy used by many vulnerable populations in an age of inequality and climate crisis. Borders are governed by complex rules and bureaucracy that present ample opportunities for corruption, producing hardship and rights abuses that often have significant gender dimensions. Jacqueline Klopp spoke with colleagues at the 2021 OECD Global Anti-Corruption & Integrity Forum, drawing on new research looking at how COVID border restrictions are impacting small-scale cross border traders in East Africa.
In reflecting on the work of the G20’s Anti-Corruption Working Group (ACWG), Liz David-Barrett’s project team explains that while grand international summits often consist in more ‘theatre’ than substance, they can nevertheless provide important avenues for reform.
The Cities of Integrity project researchers wrote about the potential of leveraging urban planners’ professional networks to build integrity within the profession itself. Instructive and innovative findings on the relationship between planning and corruption.
“If you build a gender neutral framework, you will get gender neutral results.”
Managing Director of Finance and Operations at Global Integrity
We are seeking an experienced Managing Director of Finance and Operations to join our team at Global Integrity, working out of the Open Gov Hub in Washington D.C. This is a leadership position with an opportunity to make your mark; developing a plan to improve the ways in which we manage our finance and operations, and building and leading a team to deliver on that plan, including working closely with the GI-ACE programme to fulfill programmatic and operational goals. The job description can be found on our website.