Democratic realities within West Africa are certainly facing its upheavals with military rulership in chiefly Burkina Faso led by Major Ibrahim Traore being sensationalized and stirring controversies on social media on the authenticity or not of the regime’s impact on the lives of citizens and mirroring what leadership could mean in Africa.
Young people who majorly populate the West African region are somewhat at a crossroad, torn between the realities of their lives, the political contexts of their countries and the uncertainties of their futures in the face of dwindling economic fortunes. These perplexing realities, though excruciating, present also valuable opportunities for young people to innovate and think-out new solutions to addressing the challenges of the democratic experiences of their countries.
- CivicHive’s Hackathon & Conference: Igniting Solutions
Understanding the immensity of the power of young persons to innovate, CivicHive, a Lagos, Nigeria based civic-entity and a key player in growing the ecosystem of civic-tech driven civic entities within Africa, steered carefully selected civil society groups from Nigeria and other West African countries to join in a three day event of two days of hackathon and a day of conference on the future of democracy in West Africa from the lenses of civic-tech solutions and the new possibilities for scaling these solutions in the context of artificial intelligence.
The hackathon series leveraged on the diversity of the region as well as the robust enthusiasm of civic leaders to ideate civic-tech solutions to addressing the core deficits with chiefly transparency and accountability, elections and electoral integrity, media impact, and civic education and engagement in the region. The clustering of attendees into groups along the lines of these themes, produced interesting outcomes of collective sense of responsibility, determination and innovativeness to reason out solutions within such a short period, but this again reflects on the strength of the room and the quality of ideas that attendees were already framing in the run up to the hackathon. The cluster of solutions will form the basis for further reviews and potential development into concrete civic-tech solutions.
- Building a West Africa Civic-Tech Network
The cohesion of the groups triggered the projection to formalize all the clusters into a West Africa Civic-Tech Network, which will enable post hackathon and conference interactions and engagements to share further ideas, exchange experiences and firm up solutions that are scalable and replicable across the region.
- Young Voices at the Forefront
Young people remain integral to the future of democracy in the sub-region and this was further demonstrated with their energetic participation at the West Africa Civic-tech Conference, with a sizeable population of students from the University of Lagos, Lagos State University and Yaba College of Technology enthusiastically engaging the panel discourses on – Can Technology Fix Democracy/Governance in Africa, and Rethinking AI and Civic-tech for People, Impact and Inclusive Governance. As always, the perspectives of young persons will situate around their experiences with democracy and the value-add of technology to their democratic realities.
The value-add of political parties, the opportunities for young people to grow in such parties, and the fledging challenges of representation by the elected parliamentarians/ legislators remain a major source of worry for young people. Will they dare to dream differently and robustly participate in future elections as the 2027 general elections in Nigeria, there is a lot to imagine that can happen in the coming years.
- Masterclass & Insights
The student participants must have felt they were back in their lecture rooms when in the course of the conference, they got treated to a Master-Class Community Organizing and Civic Engagement. This was an innovative dimension to the conference to cater for the mostly young persons populated attendees to understand core elements to community organizing,, the intricate dynamics and relations in communities and tactics for interfacing with diverse communities and stakeholders.
- CivicTech tools that works
Attendees also get a taste of potential solutions curated from the hackathon to again spotlight their offerings and potential value add to the civictech solutions ecosystem in the region. These solutions though in their most elementary stage will be further polished in the course of the next few weeks and will be the subject of a smaller cohort meeting sometime in August 2025 to finalize their interpretations into actual products.
- Spotlight on the West African Civic-Tech Landscape Report
- Looking Ahead
The magnitude of the West African Civic-tech conference, required insightful and forward looking opening and closing keynotes bordering on the role of civic-technology in strengthening democracy, and the future of civic-tech in West Africa- opportunities and challenges.
There is certainly so much ahead to envision in terms of the scalable new civic-tech solutions that could be created in the course of the next year from the solutions ideated at the hackathon as well as from the newly formed West Africa Civictech Network, which was a major outcome of the three day event, greater citizens especially young people interrogation of governance deficiencies, mobilization of greater number of west-Africans to determinedly get involved in decision making processes ( especially electoral processes) of their respective countries.
In all these, there is also the 2026 West African Civictech Conference to look forward to, the critical lessons from the hosting of the inaugural edition will be utilized in shaping what promises to be another exciting conference.
The message is clear: The future of West African democracy rests in the hands of its youth—and civic-tech is their most powerful tool.