 We fund organisations and projects in sub-Saharan Africa that leverage the power of mobile and web technology to bring about social change in Africa. We particularly focus on fostering accountable institutions and active informed citizens. So one of the concepts that we're grappling with is something called the accountability stack and effectively this is trying to establish what is the data that citizens really need and civil society in order to hold government and other institutions to account. And this could include things like legal information, company director information, parliamentary proceedings and so on and so forth. So one of the things that we've done in order to support this is fund parliamentary monitoring sites throughout Africa and these are usually developed through a local organisation in a given African country in partnership with my society, a UK based organisation. So one example here is Masalendo which is in Kenya and essentially this enables citizens to look at parliamentary proceedings, what's taking place in sub-committees, elected representatives and you can even see they've got a rating system for MPs. Now one thing that's worth highlighting here is most of you probably know the vast majority of citizens in Africa aren't online and so I think as people have mentioned today it's really important that we translate this data into meaningful information and that we use intermediaries like civil society and journalists to really highlight the information that might be of interest to the general public. And so this is a good example here and what Masalendo did is that looking at the data on their site they noticed that 100 MPs in Kenya were hardly actually participating in parliamentary debate and so they fed this to journalists in a really simple infographic and this resulted in two pages of front page news on this story and that really enabled citizens to start debating on these matters. This is another example called People's Assembly, a similar site in South Africa and as you can see they've developed a whole load of infographics here so one for example on crime statistics in South Africa comparing them from year to year or the departmental outcomes of audit findings and what they've done which is interesting is when they feed these on social media so things like Twitter and Facebook they found that they can drive a lot more interest in these issues without anyone actually ever looking on the site itself. We're also supporting a group in Nigeria called Budget and they very much recognise that one of the main causes of corruption in the country was that people didn't actually know about public expenditure and how resources were allocated and so they started creating all sorts of infographics, you can see two of them here, which are trying to convey the complex information in the budget to citizens in a more simple format. So for example they're very interested in the fuel industry, about 70% of Nigeria's revenue is contributed from this industry and for example when there were the fuel subsidy protests that were causing a lot of violence in 2012 in Nigeria they produce simple infographics that help people understand what this subsidy actually entailed and it enabled to stimulate more informed debate. But they've also recognised that there's only so many citizens that will even understand the infographics and so they've started thinking how can they really reach communities on the ground that matter that fundamentally care about things like their local health clinic, their local school and so what they did is develop a platform called Tracker and what this does is using open data it outlines all the different projects that the government has promised to fulfil in the current budget. And then they've looked at these projects and seen what is actually happening on the ground. So this photo here is from Ogan State in Nigeria and there were basically children, over 400 children in two classrooms, hardly any desks and benches at all in the classrooms. Some of them were having to study under thatched roofs which were leaking in the rain and they noticed that in the budget it was actually stating that three new classrooms were meant to be constructed for this school. So what they did is they actually went on to the ground on the community and showcased what was actually taking place that was relevant in these data. And so they said to them you were meant to have these three classrooms constructed and they really helped them to plan how they could constructively use this evidence to liaise with various government departments. And thankfully now the construction is taking place and the three classrooms have been built. So this is a real live example. This is another example that I really love and what I think is really exciting about this is how it amplified the voices of a marginalised community in northern Nigeria who weren't at all online but they leveraged the power of technology to amplify their voices. So to cut a very long story short in northern Nigeria, a community called Begega, there was really bad lead poisoning that took place due to poor mining practices which was leaving hundreds of children dying and thousands more in really poor health. And the government announced in their budget again using open data that they had promised to allocate 5.3 million to clean up the region. But what this team discovered, a team called Follow the Money in Nigeria, what they discovered was that actually when they went to the ground none of this was taking place. And so they collected lots of stories, testimonies and photographic evidence to show people that this was not actually taking place. And they made a really simple infographic that essentially said the government has promised this money, we don't actually, we haven't received this, this is what's happening on the ground. And they managed to muster up the interest of a lot of civil society organisations of people like Save the Children and Human Rights Watch. And they basically had a really targeted Twitter and Facebook campaign. They asked all these different groups on the same day to tweet the government department saying where is this money gone to target particular Facebook wars of senators and MPs. And amazingly 48 hours after this campaign the senator for the ecology and environment announced that the funds were going to be released. And they've actually been tracking the changes ever since which Medesans on Frontier has been providing for example the medical treatment. I wanted to show you this picture to give you a sense of what the services are like in northern Uganda. This was a region which has had over 10 years of conflict due to the Lord's Resistance Army and basically the infrastructure is in complete disarray. So this is a road that one community is meant to use in order to access the market where they sell their produce and their local secondary school. Now the government has a peace recovery and development plan and again they've published openly all of the information about the different projects in this area that have been promised to the community. But this is an example of a project that hasn't actually been undertaken. Here's another example of a maternity ward in the region and there's massive shortage of staff, there's drug stock outs, patients even have to bring their own linen to the hospital. So these are the sorts of infrastructure that we're dealing with on the ground. Now there's a fantastic group called Women of Uganda Network and they very much recognise that again these services weren't actually being delivered. And so they developed a very simple SMS based platform which enabled citizens to report issues in service delivery in their area and these were all placed on a digital map. And they also trained them to do things like take photos and video documentation to show what was really taking place in their communities. And then what's exciting is instead of just leaving this as a pretty map, which can sometimes happen, they actually formed these groups called voluntary sector accountability committees. And they were comprised of people like trusted community members, civil society, local leaders. And they actually worked together to form a really constructive relationship with various government authorities in order to get some of these results resolved. And there's all sorts of fantastic examples. For example, they had a new health centre that was built in a Loni parish. They've had schools which have had new classrooms constructed and they managed to identify a lot of malpractice in health practitioners, teachers and have this address. So really, really good on the ground examples here. So I wish I could give you about 10 more examples because they're really awesome, fantastic examples. Somewhere good to look actually is the one campaigns follow the money website. They've got a few other examples of how data is being used to hold authorities to account. And you can also look at my journalistic site, Lauren Traceman journalistic. There's lots more examples like this, but I wanted to leave you with a few take home messages. First one is to really recognise here. We've been talking a lot about analysing data, seeing trends, but we really need to think about how can citizens actually use this data. And it is possible for citizens and civil society to use this data to hold institutions to account and improve service delivery in their area. But in order to do this, we need to make sure that the data is a sufficient local level. Most people are interested in their local school, their local hospital, rather than national outcomes. It's also important that we translate this data into meaningful information, even if we have funky infographics. Fundamentally, citizens want to know how is this going to affect me? And we often need intermediaries like journalists, civil society in order to do this. I also want to highlight the transformative power of information technology here. Effectively, it can amplify impact by enabling us to share, create and access information at a lower cost, greater speed and greater scale than ever before possible. But we must remember that this needs to be complemented with on the ground initiatives. It's the on the ground work that's really going to lead to the results. And where data can help is collecting the evidence to make the case in campaigning and advocacy. And what I want to highlight here as well is that local solutions are often most successful. Most of the organisations we support are African organisations with their head offices in various African countries. They understand the local context, the cultural nuances, and they're really the ones that are going to be able to form ongoing relationships on the ground. Another thing we've really found is that you need good relationships with government and you need them to be on board. So it's really important to constructively engage with various authorities. Someone like Wugnet, for example, they managed to train some of the local leaders so that they actually felt confident to respond to some of these reports coming in from citizens. Thank you very much for listening. I know this was a bit of a whittle-stop tour and so if anyone does want to come and see me for further examples later, I'm very happy to take questions. Thank you.