AIM –Providing relevant background info on Corporations via linkages to existing records

(Godwin & Evelyn)

A good understanding of the entities they cover enable journalists to write better stories about subjects when they report them. Unfortunately for most business journalists in the developing countries, their knowledge of the multinational corporations that operate in their countries often do not go beyond the information put at their door steps by the PR machineries of these companies. Knowing where to go for key information about such corporations could be challenging for many local journalists.
Yet the influence of these multinationals (good and/or bad) on their economies are huge. In Africa, for instance, they dominate leading sectors like oil and gas, mining, banking, telecommunications, and construction. As a result they are often the contractors for most big public and private sector contracts in the continent.
Our project involves the creation of a browser tool that will help local journalists in different countries mine data about multinational corporations operating in their regions from relevant institutions/government agencies in their countries of operation as well as home countries via existing websites. Such agencies as SEC, company registration authorities, central bank, prosecution authorities, watchdog groups, custom and tax authorities, stock exchanges, etc.
Often when you use search engines to look up companies, they do not provide linkages to such critical institutional data. The essence of this project is to quicken cross-border access to information about companies operating offshore in a way that gives journalists insights on the corporations operating in their shores.
The strategy would be to identify on country by country basis (starting with West Africa), multinational corporations working in each country. For the purpose of the class project, we intend to take one (or at most two) each of multinational companies that operate/have operated in Nigeria and Ghana – (Halliburton, Siemens and Mabey & Johnson, Tullow) as pilots.