Events

Report of Development Partners Meeting

On Friday, February 10, 2023, The National Audit Office (NAO) held its annual meeting with development partners to share key highlights of its operation in 2022 as well as plans for 2023. The meeting is geared towards strengthening its collaboration with the partners as well as identification of partnership opportunities.

The meeting was attended by representatives from the British High Commission, UNDP, International Republican Institute (IRI), the German embassy’s liaison officer for Gambia, as well as SAI UK, Latvia and IDI officials. On the part of the NAO, in attendance was the AG, Deputy AGs (Technical and Finance), Directors and NAO’s Communications Specialist.

NAO’s Deputy Auditor General 2 and Communications Specialist gave an overview of the key achievements for 2022 which included the mid-term review of the NAO’s SDP 2020 – 2024 (to measure and evaluate the implementation progress), increased visibility of the NAO in the public space, increase action by the National Assembly Members on the NAO reports, as well as the delivery of critical audits such as the audit of the 2019 Financial Statement of the Government of The Gambia, audit of the COVID-19 funds (phases 1& 2), conduct of performance audits on cargo handling by Gambia Ports Authority (GPA), provision of farm inputs to groundnut farmers by the Ministry of Agriculture, NAWEC’s water supply service delivery in urban, peri-urban and provincial areas, and a special audit on the Securiport contract administration and management.

Other highlights included the hosting of a series of stakeholder engagements such as orientation workshop for the new FPAC and PEC members of the National Assembly, launching of the COVID-19 phase 1 simplified report with CSOs and other stakeholders, training for media practitioners and co-hosting the AFROSAI-E’ 18^th Strategic Review ad Governing Board Meeting).

Lessons learned in 2022 included the impact of the citizen-friendly products on the visibility of the office; and on the downside, the continuous delay in the audit timelines due to late response from auditees and lack of documentation.

Some of the key plans for the 2023 include to have more engagements with auditees, conduct a multi-stakeholder workshop on risks in extractive industries, conduct the audit of the Government of the Gambia accounts for 2020 and 2021, conduct innovative training programs for staff through the identification of champions, and have a new gender, diversity and inclusion strategy. Support needs include to conduct citizen survey and new communication products, capacity building on forensic audit and AFROSAI coordinated audits.

Representatives of development partners commended the office for its increased public visibility, publication of citizen-friendly audit products, and the crucial audits it continues to conduct. The British Embassy official (Jainaba Faye) shared that the office’s social media pages are quite engaging and through that, she’s been able to read about the recent activities. She also shared that she read through the securiport audit report and found the report very easy to understand. She recommended for the NAO to explore access to the Development partners group which sits every quarter so it can be part of the agenda in the group’s meetings which can accord it a wider reach to the development partners; and also for the NAO to consider gender related audits and to continue publication of its reports as the reports sometimes could influence the work/focus areas of the development partners.

Fatmata Sesay from the UNDP also shared how impressive she is about all the great work and initiatives being undertaken by the office, adding that she doesn’t see most Supreme Audit Institutions engaging in so much stakeholder and communication initiatives. She shared the 3 key focus areas of the UNDP and recommended for NAO to further engage the office for partnership possibilities since one of its key focus areas is on Governance (which is geared towards building on Institutions and is currently supporting the National Assembly – she also added that other possible support areas could be on the citizen friendly gender audits and that mostly UNDP’s support could be in the provision of experts, etc.

IDI’s Accelerator Project Manager also shared an overview of the Projects three focus areas (Foundations, Audits and Communications) and that the IDI is currently facing some funding gap challenges.

Auditor General (Modou Ceesay) in his closing remarks, thanked the partners for their continued interest and support to the NAO, as well as the commendation on its work, adding that the office will always appreciate the support to accelerate its service delivery.