A website launched by the French government to improve the transparency of development aid money given to Mali has attracted criticism for failing to comply with international standards.
L'aide Française au Mali (French aid to Mali) has listed the progress and number of projects conducted in the country using foreign money since mid-September. It also allows visitors to report by email or SMS anonymously any abnormality in the development of projects.
"This website provides concrete information on the projects and achievements of the French development policy in Mali. This site is a promise made to the people of Mali but also to the French people, and the French who often do not know where development aid goes," said the French deputy minister for development, Pascal Canfin, at the website's launch this week.
While the website seeks to ensure the transparency of French aid to Mali, several NGOs strongly criticised the government for not applying the international standard for aid transparency that exists in the majority of donor countries.
"Today 77% of international donors, including the European commission, the World Bank, the UK and Sweden, have published their data on aid to Mali according to international standards. France has certainly made progress but is still lagging behind on the international stage," said Guillaume Grosso, director of ONE France, an anti-poverty group.
"This is minimal transparency," said Christian Reboul, development finance expert at Oxfam. "The international standard can help simplify and bring together information and make it accessible and understandable to everyone, including aid beneficiaries."
Campaigners also criticised the project for only including projects that had a budget of more than €100,000 (£85,000), leaving smaller donations more exposed to embezzlement.
Sources have also questioned whether the website is more about political strategy than a real contribution to aid transparency.
"It is clear that the launch of this site on the eve of the visit of President François Hollande to Mali for the inauguration of the new president, Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta, is not a coincidence," said a source close to the initiative.
"We looked at what could be put in place quickly to Mali to have a website ready as early as September," said an adviser to Canfin. "We focused on speed."
For now, the French transparency initiative is only a pilot project, although there are plans to roll it out in other developing countries, according to Canfin.
The International Aid Transparency Initiative (Iati) standard provides a common format for publishing aid data. The format is based on open data, and so far 37 international donors have pledged to publish data in this format. The donors represent more than 75% of global aid, according to ONE.
France has pledged several times to adopt the international standard. At the G8 conference in Lough Erne in Northern Ireland in June, the French president announced that Paris would implement the standard for all French aid. All G8 members then agreed on the adoption of a common standard for aid transparency by 2015.
The decision was confirmed by the French prime minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, in July at the meeting of the inter-ministerial committee for international co-operation and development.
"The information on the transparency of aid to Mali that are on the website are virtually the same as those found in the international standard," said an adviser to Canfin. "We areworking to make the website quickly Iati-compliant so that we can export it to all poor countries that are a priority by the end of 2014."
