FAQs for IGI

Origins

1. How did it come to be started?

It was started by Sakwa K N Buliba and some friends in Nairobi, with other Christians from Africa whom they met through study at the University of Nairobi and through the Joint Japan / World Bank Graduate Scholarship Program.

2. How long has it been going?

A loose network has existed since 2000, but IGI was constituted as a formal organisation in 2007, and registered as a UK Charity in 2008.  Its first project was educating rural voters in Kenya ahead of the 2005 Kenyan Constitutional Referendum.

Leadership

3. Who is Sakwa Buliba?

Sakwa is the founder of IGI, the Secretary and a Trustee.  He was brought up in the rural west of Kenya, before taking a degree in education at the University of Nairobi (majoring in Philosophy and Kiswahili).  He worked as a teacher and lecturer in communication and Kiswahili, before becoming a development consultant.  He is a long-standing member of Trinity Baptist Church, Greenfields, Nairobi.

4. Who is John Muketha?

John, another Trustee, is a Kenyan career civil servant, who lectured at, and became Acting Director of, the Kenyan Institute of Administration, which is Kenya’s premier civil service training college.  He is now a Commissioner with the Public Civil Service Commission of Kenya.  He is also a deacon of Trinity Baptist Church.

International Structure

5. What is the relationship between the national groups and the central organisation?

IGI is primarily a network of Christians in Africa and elsewhere who are working to bring integrity to public life in their own communities.  The global IGI organisation (IGI Global), based in UK, works to support and coordinate their work.  Each country group is called a FIT (Focal Integrity Team) and is generally registered in its own country as a civil society organisation (CSO).  The members of the FITs are also members of IGI Global.  The FITs are affiliated to the IGI Global.  Projects are initiated for the most part by the FITs.  They also arrange funding agreements with funding organisations, have their own income, staff and assets where appropriate.  The IGI Global provides support and monitors the use of funds and the achievement of objectives.

Membership

6. What does membership mean?

A member of IGI (IGI Global) is also simultaneously a member of the appropriate FIT, and is expected to take an active part in the initiation and running of programmes suitable to improve governance in the country to which that FIT belongs.

7. What are the different sorts of membership?

There are three types of membership:

• Full voting membership
• Associate membership (non-voting)
• Institutional partnership for organisations who want to work alongside IGI

8. What are the qualifications for voting membership?

Voting members are expected to support the Reformed Christian ethos of IGI, and to be active Christians themselves, as well as being committed to the objects of IGI.  Associate members, who do not vote, are people who are committed to the objects of IGI, but do not necessarily share its Christian ethos.

The global IGI does not charge an annual subscription, but some of the FITs either require or recommend one, to help meet administration costs. In the UK there is a recommended voluntary annual subscription of £20.

9. In which countries do members live?

There are members or associates in:

Angola, Benin, Bosnia, Cambodia, Cameroon, Congo (DRC), Eritrea, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Iran, Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, Mozambique, New Zealand, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Southern Sudan, Sri Lanka, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, UK, Zambia, Zimbabwe.

Of these countries, IGI is active in Cameroon, Kenya, Mozambique, Southern Sudan and Zimbabwe, in all of which countries there is a FIT registered.

Funding Projects

10. How does IGI support African organisations financially?

Financially, IGI Global is separate from the FITs.  The FITs are generally registered as separate NGOs or CSOs in their own countries.  In some cases,  IGI Global provides ongoing support for the overheads of individual FITs, as periodic grants, for example for office costs or the support of staff, or travel costs incurred in setting up projects.

IGI Global also receives proposals from the FITs from time to time for specific projects, for which support may be provided in the form of one-off grants.  Such grants are generally well below 100% of the cost of the project, and serve as “pump-priming” funds to enable the FIT to apply to other funding bodies for more substantial grants (funding bodies are often unwilling to provide 100% of the cost of a project).

11. How does IGI Global monitor the correct use of funds provided to FITs?

IGI has an application process which requires the FIT to complete a detailed form showing how the work and funding will be managed.  Funds are only provided through individuals whom the Trustees know and in whom they have confidence.  Detailed reporting is required from the individual projects, supplemented by occasional meetings with those in charge, and occasional visits to the project sites. 

PN, 19/05/10