by Lekan Olanrewaju

As you may already know, our major feature this week is on ideas and innovation, and as such we will be spotlighting the work of the Co-Creation Hub. This post seeks to highlight two very successful start-ups which originated at the CC Hub.

The first of these initiatives is BudgIt

BudgIT is a creative project aimed at better informing Nigerians about issues pertaining to government spending of public funds, and generating discussions around them.

According to the Budgit Website, it is a project that was started “with the drive to represent Nigeria’s budget in a more user-friendly, accessible and understandable way. Our goal is to promote open access to data and ensure governance in Nigeria is strengthened with a focus on more user-friendly presentations of state and federal budget through charts and performance analysis.”

It was conceptualized and developed during Tech-In-Governance, an event held by the Co-Creation Hub in March 2011.

It was voted among the top ten startups in 2011

The team partnered with EnoughisEnough Nigeria and the Co-Creation Hub Community to develop an online application that allows citizens prune government budget. The app was launched on January 12th 2012 at yourbudgit.com/2012cut.

As shown in the pictures above, the application allows users to make cuts to the Nigerian 2012 budget as they see fit. The budget is represented as a labelled pie chart with colour coded segments.

The BudgIT #CutGovWaste app was reportedly built freely within 60 active hours by a group of Nigerian Co-Creation Hub Community developers committed to more transparent Nigeria.

BudgIT was also part of 3 startups announced in October 2011 to have been awarded £5,000 grants each, by Indigo Trust.

 

Residents Report

Residents Report is a social innovation that allows people to identify the relevant public service institutions responsible for local problems. It is “a managed platform which allows citizens to point local problems to public institutions responsible to aid prompt fixing”

Just like BudgIt, it was created at the Tech-In-Governance event hosted at the CC Hub and claimed the grand prize.

According to the website

“At the 48hr experiment which gathered geeks and designers with stakeholders from different walks of life, our team of 4 worked tirelessly to create a working prototype web and mobile-based solution for Residents Report. We met some very smart, young innovators and social entrepreneurs who were not only working hard to solve Nigeria’s social problems through technology but were also our competition!

Governance encompasses not just government, but also the civil society, the systems, the procedures and processes in place for planning, management and decision-making. Fostering sound public judgment through engagement of citizens is a key instrument for better governance. While technology offers no magic solutions, the diffusion of the mobile phone in Africa as well as a growing internet penetration provides a platform through which more citizens can gain access to information while participating in development processes and decisions that affect them.”

The initiative allows citizens all over the country, an easy and inexpensive way to report issues affecting their communities; anything from potholes and boreholes to garbage and graffiti can be reported, through web and mobile tools.

Residents Report was also awarded a £5,000 grant by Indigo Trust in October 2011.

We say kudos to the developers and everyone over at the CC Hub!