We are growing — Meet CTIN’s new regional ambassadors
We are excited to launch our flagship Regional Ambassadors Programme (RAP) in 2022, a programme aimed at strengthening regional connection and participation in the civic tech space.
RAP grew out of CTIN’s intentions to function as a Pan-African Community of Practice (CoP) in response to ever-increasing interest from the wider African civic tech community, a testament to the need for a community for people in this space.
We would like to welcome our uniquely positioned organisational ambassadors representing four regions in Africa.
- Pollicy is representing East Africa
- Magamba Network representing Southern Africa
- Chad Innovation representing Central Africa
- and finally, ccHub representing West Africa
The impact of civic innovators on the African continent continues to grow. CTIN has been at the forefront of documenting their impact but also bringing together this community of practice from all over the continent. This is progress we pride ourselves in. There is much to be done towards creating a stronger network of African civic tech initiatives that share our vision of increasing awareness about civic tech and growing the network of innovators using tech for good.
Beginning today, we are moving to deepen the roots of civic tech initiatives across the continent. We have partnered with these organisations from across the continent to grow the branches of our network but also have a hand in influencing the emergence of new and impactful civic tech initiatives in every region.
Background and context
The Civic Tech Innovation Network (CTIN) is pleased to introduce our flagship Africa Regional Ambassadors Programme (RAP). A programme aimed at circumventing our geographic limitations and strengthening regional connection and participation within the African civic tech community. This programme will help CTIN, as a CoP, to build an active civic tech community, as well as build awareness and strategic ties with innovators, organisations, researchers, practitioners, and other civic tech actors across the continent. The RAP is thus being initiated as a way to solidify CTIN’s reach and regional partnerships in the African civic tech space.
As an African organisation that uniquely convenes and maintains a CoP with civic tech actors, it is important that the CTIN actively and intentionally seeks out visibility in African regions currently underrepresented within our Network so that nobody is left out of the community building and beneficiation. While the CTIN is based in South Africa, it has functioned as a Pan-African CoP in response to ever-increasing interest from the wider African civic tech community since 2018.
The Regional, local knowledge and networks of the RAP ambassadors will combine towards building a community that will connect both physically and online. The RAP ambassadors’ local knowledge will expand our knowledge of initiatives across all the regions of the continent and in turn create a wider network of African civic tech initiatives.
Learn about the ambassadors
Pollicy — East Africa
Pollicy, based in Uganda, functions at the intersection of data, technology and design to improve government service delivery. Pollicy is a portmanteau that stems from Opinion polling and Policymaking. Pollicy was founded and registered in 2016 with a mandate to redesign service delivery for citizens. Pollicy’s work focuses on influencing a culture of responsible data use, promoting appropriate data governance practices and advocating for policies that support an enabling data ecosystem. Pollicy recently celebrated 5 years and their influence has been felt in the community through their projects which include CREATEYOURKAMPALA, Choose Your Own Fake News, Wetaase, Digital Ambassador Program and many more. Learn more about Pollicy.
Over time, Pollicy have extensively worked in Sub-Saharan Africa in accordance with their core competencies and strategies, including:
- Research, their research uses feminist methodologies to explore the role of data on society today. Their research focuses on mixed-methods approaches to investigate emerging issues within the data ecosystem such as accessibility, participation, engagement, expression, and innovation.
- Facilitating Learning through Training and Events; Pollicy’s training focuses on building data literacy amongst their civil society and government partners through hands-on, participatory in-person, and virtual courses on ethical data and technology use. Alongside the training, they also connect partners and host a number of convenings aimed at furthering the discourse on technology and data use. This includes an annual event called DataFest Africa, quarterly events called DataClub, and monthly training such as DataLadies, workshops, and webinars for the broader community.
- Communication and Media Development; Our work relies on using openly available datasets to build data products that ease the sharing and use of data for decision making especially among key stakeholders like government and civil society. Our media effort uses creative approaches including social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram as well as murals, films, music, and games to tackle society’s most pressing issues of our time.
Follow them on Twitter, Facebook, Medium and LinkedIn
Magamba Network — Southern Africa
Magamba means ‘Heroes’ or ‘Freedom Fighters’. It all started when two young Zimbabweans, Comrade Fatso & Outspoken, met at a poetry slam and battled each other — with words. Magamba Network, based in Zimbabwe, has grown into Zimbabwe’s leading creative organisation and one of the country’s trailblazers in digital media and youth engagement. Magamba was born at a time of hyperinflation, disillusionment and political oppression. The network emerged in 2007 and was all about inspiring young people to be part of the change our country desperately needs. And Magamba decided to do that using fun, creative tools that speak to young people in a language they understand: from hip hop to satire, from social media to innovation.
Magamba Networks Open Parly Africa project is a cutting edge open data project using digital media, urban culture and civic tech to track and aggregate parliament data, defend civic space and increase young people’s participation in national political processes with operations in Zimbabwe (Open Parly ZW), Zambia (Open Parly ZED), Nigeria (Open Parly Nigeria) and Kalfadhi (Open Parly Somalia).
Today Magamba Network is Zimbabwe’s leading creative organization and we work on the cutting edge of arts, digital media, activism and innovation. Magamba’s award-winning initiatives include Shoko Festival, Zimbabwe’s longest-running festival of urban culture; Moto Republik, Zimbabwe’s first creative hub; the internationally acclaimed Zambezi News satire show, the weekly political news show The Week and the pioneering digital media projects Open Parly and The FeedZW.
Magamba has a rich regional network of developers, designers and activists who are building data-driven civic tech solutions through regular physical and virtual Africa wide Hackathons (#Hack4Her, #Hack4Rural, #Hack4Elections, #Hack4covid). Through Magambas annual media and tech Conference — Digital Media Week | The Hub Unconference @ShokoFestival.
Follow them on Twitter and Facebook
ccHub — West Africa
Co-Creation Hub (CcHUB) is Nigeria’s first open living lab and pre-incubation space designed to be a multi-functional, multi-purpose space where work to catalyze creative social tech ventures take place. The HUB is a place for technologists, social entrepreneurs, government, tech companies, impact investors and hackers in and around Lagos to co-create new solutions to the many social problems in Nigeria. CcHUB is a Pan-African innovation hub with tremendous experience in accelerating technology adoption across Africa. Amongst other areas, CcHUB contributes to good governance through initiatives that bridge the gap between the government and its citizens. ccHub’s most recent initiatives include GoVote and Data 4 Governance.
GoVote is a platform and campaign to educate Nigerians on how to register to vote in the General Elections and to mobilize them to do so. The platform simplifies the voting process and serves as an information point to different categories of voters. Since its inception in 2015, ccHUB has celebrated milestones that assert its mandate to increase civic participation and engagement and to enhance public service delivery. Its Data 4 Governance Challenge, an 8-day ‘Design for Development’ hackathon is aimed at accelerating the application of data for effective decision making in the delivery of public services in Nigeria. The main focus areas were: Health, Education, Transportation, Civic Engagement & Accountability, Gas, Agriculture and Urban Planning.
The CTIN Regional Ambassador Programme provide a platform to impact and mobilize the West African stakeholders through civic tech initiatives to promote transparency, accountability and public participation.
Follow them on Twitter, Facebook Medium and LinkedIn.
Chad Innovation — Central Africa
Chad Innovation represents a community of young volunteers, Chadians and foreigners, entrepreneurs, executives, and students whose objective is to raise awareness, mobilize, engage and equip young Chadians to learn and explore careers in entrepreneurship to build a resilient generation. young Chadian leaders.
During the pandemic, Chad Innovation builds a digital citizen platform, available through the web but also accessible via conventional telephones with real-time medical assistance and providing information relating to the evolution of the pandemic in Chad. Chad Innovation also led a campaign on sensitization of citizens, in particular, young people, women and vulnerable groups (including people living in rural areas, nomads, people with disabilities) on their rights and civic duties for the 2021 presidential elections through campaigns awareness using digital tools especially — Disco — where we sell music on tape, disk or USB in Africa in major markets. This led to Chad Innovation to be selected by FHI360 to carry out awareness-raising actions for peaceful and united citizen participation in the transition process by USAID after the tragic death of the former President using digital tools (Social media, citizen tech platform, etc.).
The CTIN programme will enable Chad Innovation to learn and expand its network in Central Africa and the rest of the continent.
Follow them on Facebook and Twitter
What to expect from the programme
The ambassadors will be responsible for several activities in their regions, including:
- Identifying Civic Tech actors in the region
Regional ambassadors will be responsible for ongoing scanning, identifying and sharing of civic tech actors and activities in their respective regions.
- Regional member integration into the network
Once regional ambassadors have identified the civic tech initiatives, they will facilitate the integration of these organisations into the CTIN’s Community of Practice (CoP).
- Collaborative engagement
Under the ambassador programme, CTIN and each regional ambassador will co-plan and co-host one collaborative event.
- Regional civic tech news/content contribution
In order to highlight regional African civic tech stories, the ambassadors will also be expected to share the latest civic tech and related news, features and stories with CTIN in order for CTIN to share with the wider community.
Look out for more announcements about the programme on all our platforms. Join the network here
