December 15, 2020/Edelman

Written by Dr Michael Kilpatrick, Senior Advisor for the Global Grant Community at the Alliance for Accelerating Excellence in Science in Africa (AESA), a platform of the African Academy of Sciences and the African Union Development Agency (AUDA-NEPAD).

Humanitarian needs in Africa are vast and generally involve the mass displacement of people and wide spread loss of life and livelihoods as a result of conflict and natural disaster, which significantly affect the ability of communities to recover and build resilience to future shocks. In reducing risks from happening, preparing for and responding to crises we need to develop simpler, quicker, efficient, trusted, and reliable systems that build trust in the global grant funding process in order to build resilience and help people overcome some of the continent’s pressing issues.

So how do we empower NGOs, CBOs and CSOs to meet Africa’s most urgent humanitarian needs by bridging the financial gap, and ensuring that the most vulnerable on the continent are supported during turbulent times?

To provide the missing piece in this financial jigsaw, the  Alliance for Accelerating Excellence in Science in Africa (AESA) (a platform created by the African Academy of Sciences (AAS) and the African Union Development Agency (AUDA-NEPAD) working closely with the African Organization for Standardization (ARSO), led a global consortium of funders and grantees to develop a standard of what represented best practice in the management of grant funding. The result was a new global standard called the Good Financial Grant Practice (GFGP).

However, the standard is only the first part of the solution. To enable grantee organizations to gauge their compliance to the requirements of the standard, the second part of the solution has been the development of a portal-based precertification assessment system. The portal enables organizations to review and respond to the compliance requirements of the various clauses in the GFGP standard and support their responses by uploading appropriate documentation.

 The resulting compliance report provides an excellent capacity development tool as it is a road map of any gaps that need to be followed to become fully compliant to the requirements of the standard as it shows areas of growth in grant management capabilities of an institution.

The third, and final, part of the solution is the GFGP Certification Scheme. The Global Grant Community, as the Certification Scheme owner, has issued licenses to suitably competent audit firms to undertake certification audits to verify that the organizations are working in compliance to the requirements of GFGP.  Certificates of compliance to GFGP are valid for 2 to 3 years depending on the type of organization being certified. Further, there are sufficient audit firms licensed to undertake GFGP Certification audits that in virtually every country worldwide there are at least two audit firms competing for your business.

 In response to travel restrictions imposed by the COVID -19 pandemic, the audit firms have adapted their GFGP auditing procedures so the audit can be undertaken virtually, which not only eliminates travel and subsistence costs but also accelerates the process.

As more and more grantee organizations become certified to GFGP there will be consistent and relentless upward pressure on both governmental and non-governmental funders to financially support all their grantees to become certified to GFGP.

The future is looking bright for all grantees globally as by becoming certified to GFGP they can secure an internationally recognised symbol of trust and accountability. This provides assurance to the donor community that the organization they intend to fund is financially competent to manage their award.