BudgIT Launches Civic Tech Focused Platform

Civic-tech organisation, BudgIT has announced the launch of its civic tech focused platform – Civic Hive.

The company said in a statement that the platform was established to create an intersection between the citizens and the government thereby closing up the gap and making citizens much more active in governance.

The lead Partner at BudgIT, Oluseun Onigbinde said: “Civic Hive is part of the 5-year plan for BudgIT to make the governance more open with more tech solutions. With this effort the program, has placed four resilient youths on a six month fellowship to help them actualize their dreams.

“The Civic Hive Fellows, who will be selected and groomed under the platform, are subsequently expected to form a pool of talented civic professionals equipped to creatively boost the standard of governance with their solutions, and by extension, the society.”
Onigbinde noted that civic engagement plays an important role in the work BudgIT does, “amplifying campaigns and reaching intended audience. He indicated that fellowship is a way of building the capacity of people with transformational ideas to do more, and solidifying our partnership with the society at large.”

Civic Hive, he added, currently has four fellows who are working on different thematic areas that improve civic engagement.
“Amplify, by Dotun Olatoke, is a civic tech initiative that seeks to amplify the voices of the forgotten people of Nigeria and generate support for underserved communities. Through digital tools and platforms (website, social media), issues affecting people in these communities and the plight of the forgotten will be spotlighted and given adequate coverage, with the goal of generating awareness capable of motivating government and active citizens to support for sustainable interventions.

“Robert Ogbogu runs Locate, a platform that helps to track missing persons easily in Nigeria. In his own presentation, Robert said “people gets missing every minute in Lagos alone and every first four hours matter to locating the individual” with the rise of this platform missing people will reduce drastically, “he said.

He added: “Nelson Olanipekun runs Gavel, a platform that seeks to bring transparency to the justice sector in Nigeria. Nelson stated that the platform will present citizens more access to the justice system and be able to take action at all times. In his words “Gavel is building a justice clock that will track all court cases that are initiated by the masses.

“Open Medic by Dennis Akagha is a civic engagement platform that seeks to have an Open Inventory platform that will enhance the accessibility of essential medical consumables in health facilities and other medical outlets in Nigeria at any given time. In addition, Civic Hive is also announcing a female cohort – this is an open call for ladies who have solutions that are strictly based on civic tech and has pulled traction.”