From October 8th to 10th, Clear Impact, Accelerate Performance, and United Way South Africa hosted a three day Results-Based Accountability™ (RBA) Africa Summit, which was held at the Hyatt Regency in Johannesburg, South Africa. The event brought together leading RBA experts to introduce cutting-edge RBA concepts that are helping create measurable improvements for children, families, and communities across the globe.

During the Summit, RBA creator Mark Friedman had the chance to sit down with Godfrey Mutizwa of CNBC Africa’s Beyond Markets program, to discuss how the RBA framework could address “issues on corruption and lack of service delivery” in the government and non-profit sectors of South Africa. View the interview in its entirety above, or visit CNBC Africa’s website here.

In addition to providing a brief overview of the RBA framework (including the critical distinction between accountability for populations and programs) and the inspiration that led to its development, Friedman addressed the specific challenge of measuring accountability in government and non-government organizations due to a “lack of discipline in the use of data.”

Contrasting RBA to other measurement systems that have been used in the past, Friedman stated “It’s

[RBA] simpler, it’s easier to understand, and I think it’s more fair. And it’s also designed to help to help the people who are running the programs. A lot of data in the past has been used by outside agencies to pass judgment on programs and managers, and there’s a role for that when you’re doing auditing, but managers need, just like in any good business…need the equivalent of profit and market share to run their operations, and we’re trying to help them do that.”

Addressing Mutizwa’s concern that RBA holds non-profit managers and elected representatives to the same level of accountability (despite differences in the sourcing of public funds), Friedman answered with his belief that “If people are getting money to do something, they need to be able to account for what they’re doing with that money and to show that they’re making an impact.”

CNBC Africa is Africa’s most powerful multiplatform business media brand, and is part of the global CNBC family, meaning that Friedman’s interview will reach audiences in more than 100 countries.

 

To learn more about Mark Friedman and his book Trying Hard is not Good Enough, or to download RBA learning tools, please visit the Fiscal Policy Studies Institute at resultsaccountability.com or Clear Impact at clearimpact.com.