NEWSROOM
CEGAA has continued to show considerable growth in its tenth year. This has been due to our dynamic team of dedicated and skilled staff, our supportive and informed Board of Trustees, our committed and energetic partners throughout Southern and East Africa, and not least, our donors and clients who have continued to believe in our services and potential. I thank you all for your contribution, energy, enthusiasm and commitment, which have played an important role in driving CEGAA's vision forward.
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CEGAA participated in the Department of Science and Technology (DST) Innovation for Inclusive Development (IID) Seminar, focusing on Measuring What Counts: How suitable are our research tools, measures and indicators for promoting innovation for inclusive and sustainable development?The aim of this policy seminar was to build an understanding of how participatory visual methods can facilitate Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) measurement and the development of indicators that are grounded in the lived realities of actors that have been traditionally marginalised from the formal national system of innovation (NSI), from the formal economy and from decision-making processes.
CEGAA is participating in a budget transparency initiative called Vulekamali(vulekamali.gov.za), an initiative of the National Treasury and IMALI YETHU - a budget coalition of civil society organisations with interest in budget policy matters. Vulekamali is an online budget data portal allowing scrutiny of national, provincial and local government budget documents by interested parties.The Vulekamali stakeholders are hosting a series of provincial events to promote the portal and facilitate analyses and debate among government and civil society stakeholders on Open Budgets for Health and Food Security. On 26 November 2018 the KwaZulu-Natal Treasury hosted a multi-stakeholder briefing in Pietermaritzburg where stakeholders looked at the portal and practiced using it. It was found to be an invaluable resource for people interested in budget matters, whether in the community or inside government.The Vulekamali Online Budget Data Portal DataQuest and Hackathon events took place in Durban on the 27th and 28th November 2018.The Budget Data Quest aimed to bring together a diverse audience to explore their budget analysis and advocacy needs. Participants reflected on the national and provincial budget information available on vulekamali.gov.za to determine what information is of interest to them, and how it should be presented to be of most value.The Budget Hackathon brought together participants with a wide array of skills and problem solving abilities, with the ultimate goal of exploring solutions to budget analysis and advocacy problems. Participants were encouraged to work in teams to determine and solve these problems, which emanated from the Dataquest, and fed into the next day's Hackathon.The Budget Hackathon attracted participants with technical and non technical expertise as well as a wide range of skills, including: budget analysis, budget advocacy, fiscal understanding, data wrangling, programming, journalism, economists to name but a few. The focused, problem-solving approach of a hackathon complemented the exploratory discussions in the Data Quest.Civil society organisations, community interest groups, individuals, government officials, journalists and parliamentarians are encouraged to visit the Vulekamali portal for their budget data needs.Any questions can be addressed to Zukiswa Kota (z.kota@ru.ac.za), the Lead Coordinator of Imali Yethu coalition.
This paper outlines some trends in South Africa’s economic situation, its national and provincial health allocations generally, HIV and TB allocations and spending, and then take a closer look at spending trends at provincial and sub-programme levels in 2016/17. Our analyses are based on 2015/16, 2016/17, 2017/18 and 2018/19 budget and expenditure documents, 2016/17 provincial HIV CG Evaluation Reports, and CG quarterly reports.The paper notes some achievements in the HIV and TB spending in SA. The reported improvements in service delivery and health outcomes would not have been possible without the increasing political and financial commitment of the South African government, and continued support from funding and implementing partners.Some improvements in actual spending were made in 2016/17 after the provincial health HIV and TB finance and programme managers were provided with training and technical support by the FINCAP Project of CEGAA/ HE2RO to improve costing of the Conditional Grant (CG) business plans and management of provincial finances. More accurate costing was promoted to ensure reasonable targets in line with available resources and real expenditure. Provinces were encouraged to accelerate their recruitment process of key personnel required for the expansion of the treatment programme, and to ensure that procurement and payment for services were done in line with the business plan timeframes. The FINCAP Project, in partnership with the National Department of Health and special support from Strategic Development Consultants (SDC), has contributed vastly to these improvements.FINCAP was a successful five-year (2013 – 2017) partnership project between CEGAA and HE2RO as part of HE2RO’s INROADS Programme, with funding from USAID. It was extended for another year in 2018 to deepen its interventions at district level.
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The South African Government (SAG) has since 2012/13 spent more than R4.5 trillion on public policy including education, health and social development programmes. An analysis of seven years (2012/13 – 2018/19) of the total government’s consolidated no
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South Africa's HIV and AIDS pandemic is one of the highest in the world with an HIV and AIDS prevalence of 15.9% in the adult population (15-49 years old) as of the year 2013 (Statistics South Africa 2014). The prevalence amongst women (15-49 years old)