While we will continue to focus on promoting transparency, accountability and citizen engagement globally, our focus is on finding and building bridges between citizens and governments in sub-saharan Africa – particularly at sub-national level.

In our experience, there has been a strong temptation to have shiny projects that have limited impact because of funding and other needs for support. We recognise this as a reality in our business. From experience we have learnt that in fact many meaningful activities around involve slow and progressive change. To this end, we commit to going through the process that will yield meaningful impact, even when we have to operate within financial and other constraints.

What this means for us is that we will seek to form partnerships with other like minded organisations in government, private sector and other players in society for our projects. We care that solutions are built in a way that they can scale easily and can easily be replicated in other countries and sectors.

We acknowledge that there is a role that is played by civil society organisations to aggressively call out governments for areas where they are not performing well, we recognise that the area of transparency, accountability and citizen engagement is relatively emerging and in its early stages in sub-Saharan Africa and therefore we elect to work alongside governments to develop policies and structures for openness and citizen engagement.

We are committed to take care to work together with minority groups in every sphere that we work. We shall be decidedly nonpartisan and work with governments as well as other political and civil groups in a way that ensures that efforts towards transparency are sustainable. (See our DEI Policy)

It is our view that everyone has something to offer in the work towards building an equitable, fair, democratic and open society. We see differences in opinion and approach as good and valuable, when discussed openly and respectfully and we shall use such debates to fuel our creative impetus to have impact.

We shall work openly as much as possible and all our tools and materials shall be released openly. Given that we are a collaborative organisation, we shall also be cognisant that openness in some of the actual work we do shall conflict with our partners views and policies and we shall respect their needs as we continue to advocate for them to be open. We choose to ensure positive impact on our work. In other words, while we are committed to be open, we recognise that others may not see things our way and we shall seek to work with them to find acceptable avenues to strengthening transparency and accountability. We shall appreciate that there is process and we shall go through it painstakingly.