The Auditor-General (A-G), Mr. Daniel Yaw Domelevo has urged National Audit Offices (NAOs) / Supreme Audit Institutions (SAIs) to serve citizens’ interest to ensure the progress of their people. He asked the NAOs / SAIs to examine issues objectively.

The A-G made the call at a three-day Regional Roundtable Meeting on the audit of the Global Fund Grants by the SAIs in eight Sub-Saharan African Countries. The meeting was organised by the AIDSPAN with support from the GIZ BAKUP Health and the English-speaking African Organisation of Supreme Audit Institutions (AFROSAI-E).

The Global Fund is a strategic partner in the health sector, contributing to significant achievements towards slowing down the spread of the three major killer diseases (HIV, Tuberculosis and Malaria). Presently, Ghana, Kenya and Rwanda are the countries carrying out the audits of the Global Fund grants in their respective countries.

The roundtable discussion was aimed at sharing best audit practices from these three countries and to identify knowledge gaps and needs for capacity building.  It was also to increase the scope of the SAIs that audit the Global Fund Grants to include compliance and programme performance.

Mr. Domelevo said that Ghana had received and disbursed about $800 million from the Global Fund. His Office, he noted, was conducting special audits on the usage of the Fund to ascertain value for money as well as for posterity to be proud of us.

Touching on Innovation and use of technology in accountability, Mr. Domelevo said that Ghana Audit Service had launched a mobile application called ‘CITIZENSEYE’ which aims at empowering citizens to report any suspected case of financial malfeasance, poor service delivery and other identified acts of corruption in public institutions directly to the A-G’s Office via the individual’s mobile phone.

He said the involvement of the citizenry in the audit processes will contribute to audit planning and programmes to ensure that the Office achieves greater audit impact in the lives of Ghanaians. The A-G said his Office had followed up on issues which citizens had reported using the CITIZENSEYE Mobile App to address them while others had been incorporated in regular audits. He therefore encouraged the SAIs to use technology to accelerate development.

The meeting was held in Accra and the participating countries were Burkina Faso, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Togo. Present at the roundtable discussion included representatives from GIZ BACKUP, AIDSPAN, Global Fund, AFROSAI-E, CREFIAF, Office of the Inspector General of the Global Fund, Auditors-General from Kenya and Liberia.