At today’s closing session of the 2019 World Forum for Democracy, the Council of Europe announced that the winner of its Democracy Innovation Award was the initiative “Follow The Money”, a network of grassroots citizens in Nigeria dedicated to tracking government and international aid spending.

“Follow the Money” is a participatory advocacy-based initiative that advocates for the proper use of government and international aid funds in grassroots communities, to ultimately ensure that public services work for the people. It is a network of activists, social workers, lawyers, journalists, development consultants, researchers and data analysts, that have signed up on its social mobility platform. It uses media platforms like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, as well as mainstream media, to amplify the voices of marginalised communities.

Three initiatives out of the 27 discussed at the Forum were shortlisted for the final vote:

• Follow the Money (Nigeria) – presented at the workshop “Rebuilding Trust in Institutions”
• alGOVrithms (ePaństwo Foundation/CRTA, Poland) – presented at the workshop “The Human Brain: The Ultimate Fact-Checker?”
• Le Drenche (France) – presented at the workshop “Local journalism - at the frontline of the information ?”

The Forum brought together 2,000 participants and 250 speakers from all over the world to discuss information and democracy.