CivicHive CivicTech Fellowship

About the CivicHive CivicTech Fellowship

Given the increasing number of young people in Nigeria, Civic Tech has emerged as a powerful catalyst for positive societal change, strategically leveraging digital innovation to bridge the gap between government and citizens, potentially expanding the civic space. Its transformative impact extends across crucial aspects of public participation, transparency, climate resilience, justice reforms, accountability, and the efficient delivery of public services.

Our civictech fellowship aims to raise new civic-tech leaders through an incubation program, which will focus on key themes which include; Civic Participation & Engagement, Transparency & Accountability, Institutional Efficiency,  Justice reforms, and Climate resilience and environmental issues.

Bi-annually, we incubate civictech solutions that advance these thematic areas. Our fellowship embraces different levels of ideas, irrespective of the scale – local or hyperlocal – and we are open to the diverse use of technology  – radio, text, print, IoT, machine learning, artificial intelligence, or social media – as a channel. We heavily focused on the impact the ideas will have on the people and the civic spaces, the sustainability of ideas to deliver value, and the unrelenting spirit of the participants. 

In the last five years, 34 Civic Hive fellows have built critical civic products that solve social problems at all levels of society. Three of these projects–Gavel, Amplify, and Flemer Project–have built stronger partnerships with global organizations and continue to reference the quality of the Civic Hive training as crucial to achieving their goals. We have also seen tremendous progress in fellows such as GenderMobile, PROMAD, PolicyShapers, JusticePadi, and Urban Alert.

Thematic Areas

• Artificial Intelligence for Good: We recognize the growing interest and the spread of new forms of artificial intelligence and emerging and well-documented challenges. We want to support fellows who are building solutions that are improving the use of AI in mitigating challenges and ensuring effective governance of the AI ecosystem.
• Low-cost Climate Tech Solutions and Advocacy Movements: Majorly the challenges of environment and food security in the context of climate change continue to negatively impact Nigeria. We want to incubate young people who have tech-driven/tech-based solutions to the challenges of climate change, especially as it relates to managing agricultural outcomes, environmental issues, and building community resilience. We will be providing targeted grants to support the development of affordable innovative ideas and solutions 
• Technology for Social Good ( Health, Education and Justice)  Our work over the years has shown us one thing, ‘that Nigeria is replete with talents that can respond in equal measure with the right civic-tech tools to solve our problems.’ We want to nurture the next generation of BudgIT, Connected Development, Gavel, GenderMobile and many more.

The fellowship program will incubate 12 new innovative and creative solutions in the civic space. The fellows will be giving technical and legal support to get their solutions ready and set to launch! They will be placed on a monthly stipend (N150,000) and provided a work space throughout the fellowship. 

Program Inquiries:
Fellowship@civichive.org