Convexity Technologies Limited, a fintech business owned by Nigerians, has announced the release of an application that tracks donor cash to designated beneficiaries and palliative disbursement.
Adedeji Owonibi, the Chief Operating Officer of Convexity, revealed this following a Tuesday in Abuja meeting with delegates from the French Embassy.
In an interview with media, Adedeji said that the CHATS app helps in the effective distribution of funds to donors, implementing organizations, and recipients by enabling end-to-end visibility of the monies.
He says the way to overcome the problem of palliative diversion is to trace the aid that is delivered by the government or donor to the NGO, agents, and designated beneficiaries.
He mentioned that the company has created a digital solution using blockchain technology to digitize the process, pay for food, supplies for teachers, and other gifts in an effort to counteract the fall in financing for humanitarian causes and guarantee that money reaches the intended recipients.
He said, “The app is to bring transparency and solutions to the ecosystem. We look at local problems and answer those problems using local solutions.
“For example, one of the latest solutions we built was around palliative distribution. So we know there is a transparency issue and we built a solution that actually gives end-to-end visibility to both the donors, the implementing bodies, and the beneficiaries in a small suite.
“For us, aid distribution transparency is key, and apart from that transparency is to give confidence to both local and international donors.
“So there is a UK publication that was quoted to have said that Nigeria is so corrupt and it is better to burn money for donations. Still, we spoke to the publication by building a solution that will engender transparency for donors to be able to see where their monies are going.”
He further urged the government to consider using the method to regain public trust in the various social net programmes currently implemented by the current administration.
“The next thing is to encourage the government to use this solution to bind citizens’ trust as the bulk of the project is going through social safety nets, and we believe with a solution like this, the government can become transparent and donors will be able to trace the impact of their monies, knowing the money was used for the right purposes.
“A success story we recorded recently was with the Red Cross when we stopped the diversion of drugs. The practice before was to go to the Internally Displaced Persons camps with them but by the next day, it would be found at the pharmacy and chemist.
“So our solution in working with the Red Cross was to identify the beneficiaries and know persons who benefit from the malaria vaccines and the drugs. We onboarded them and with a QR code, they could visit the chemist, scan and then get their drugs and the chemist gets his money from the app directly. In that case, nobody is hoarding anything and no one will get anything if they are not treated,” he stated.
According to The PUNCH, there have been requests for an open process for allocating aid supplies across the nation.
Tasiu Al’amin-Roba, the governor of Kano state’s senior special assistant, was recently taken into custody on suspicion of misappropriating state-funded palliative care intended for the underprivileged.
