Civic Hive, BudgIT’s civic innovation centre, prides itself in creating a space for civic-tech innovators in Nigeria. Since its inception, Civic Hive has built Nigeria’s civic tech space and contributed immensely to curating solutions to Nigeria’s numerous challenges. We have innovated, built, and supported civic tech solutions that proffered institutional efficiency, transparency, accountability, and civic education in the last five years.

Our core pillars are

The Civic Hive Fellowship:
The civic hive fellowship started in 2017 to create a synergy between curious minds deeply interested in changing their immediate environment. The fellowship, over the years, has infused art, design, data and advocacy with public finance and democracy to birth social innovations. Through the fellowship, we have taken citizens through the civic centred curriculum with the capability to initiate, articulate and maintain conversations in demanding effective governance. Every year, we churn out solutions focused on solving problems around the justice system in Nigeria, improving service delivery or establishing brilliant data journalists through the program.

Supporting existing Civic Society Organizations:
We understand that with the combined knowledge of over 25 years, it has become essential to share this knowledge with other organisations. Our research has reflected how poorly civic tech organisations present designs, data, and other communication tools in telling their stories. This spurred us to curate a series of training for program officers in concerned and interested organisations on how to use special tools for design and storytelling methods. In the past five years, we have trained organisations in Abuja, Lagos, Kwara, Ibadan, Osun, Ondo, Ekiti and Kano. We have a record of over 500 organisations that have benefitted from these sessions.

Civic Education:
In 2019, at Civic Hive, we ran a campaign in partnership with Tracka, tagged the Value of a Vote campaign. In our findings across 22 states, we realised the low level of civic education across the country. This led us to develop a civic education manual that has been translated into all major languages in Nigeria and has been used to engage over 1 million people across Nigeria.

New Solutions:
Civic Hive is a nest of doers, people who have it in their mind to create new solutions. With that in mind, we created an enabling environment that provides the platform for people to express their ingenuity. We host regular hackathons, talkathons and ideation sessions which has birthed countless products and solutions to civic problems in Nigeria and abroad.

Co-working space:
Civic Hive also serves as a co-working space for people who we know are doing great stuff and can’t afford an entire office space to themselves. While people pay some stipends to use the space, we created programs that help widen the reach for those who use our co-working space. In addition, we have created a community of civic leaders through the use of the co-working space by opening them up to our vast network and resources.