We are ten! Here are our 10 lessons in 10 years

This week, we celebrate ten years since our founders started on a journey towards an open society that is managed by informed, fact-driven citizens. Here’s a fun factoid: our original name was going to be lengthy – The African Centre for Open Governance and Open Data (ACOGOD). As we start thinking about things we are…

Global Goals Week 2022 – it’s time to #Act4SDGs differently

Today marks the start of the Global Goals Week 2022, a shared commitment between more than 170 partners in civil society, business, academia, and the UN system to accelerate action on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), especially during the UN General Assembly High-level Week. Thousands of organisations and stakeholders congregate in hundreds of events worldwide to discuss ways…

We’ve officially handed over the Nandi Data Desk!

After the successful launch of the Nandi Data Desk, we were back at it, working together with Nandi’s county leaders to prepare their data for public view. Through our engagement, the team from Nandi were well trained to manage the system. With the simple accessible web application, the Nandi data desk provides a responsive and seamless data upload process. The engagements culminated in the successful handing over of the system to the technical team, who are well equipped to manage the County Data Desk.

Nandi officially launches the County Data Desk

Nandi County’s Data Desk was officially launched on 5th May 2022 amidst pomp and glamour at the County headquarters in Kapsabet, making it the second county to establish the facility that collects, curates, analyzes and publishes relevant county data, in line with their commitments to the Open Government Partnership.

Announcing the Green Fellowship

The Open Institute’s Green Fellowship is given in line with our goal to shed light to “the invisibles” – those communities of people who are most left behind due to poverty, lack of functional literacy and government support. The Open Institute is happy to announce The Open Institute Green Fellowship, a three-month-long programme in partnership…

Check your bias! Components of effective citizen engagement

How do biases affect how we interact with others? We explored this question during our recent Data Leaders Fellowship workshop where we looked at citizen engagement as an interactive two way process that encourages participation, exchange of ideas and flow of conversation. An effective citizen feedback framework considers trust, participation, language, context and bias as components that work together to ensure that the maximum level of engagement is achieved.

Piloting Sabasi: Data Collection Made for Africa

We have been developing Sabasi as a free and open-source tool designed to help individuals and organizations to collect and manage data. We realised that there are a lot of tools out there, but many of them do not work in our context, where we frequently need to do our work in very remote areas. Designed for our African context, Sabasi is easy to use and requires minimal training.
Our Technology Director tells all about his recent trip to Bujumbura where we are piloting the use of Sabasi.

Examining Data Protection Practices In Kenya & Africa: Launching Key Data Reports

The Open Institute and Amnesty continue to lead the push for the championing of Data Protection and Data Rights in Kenya and beyond.
Launching two reports resulting from studies on data protection practices and regimes in Kenya and beyond, we look forward to engaging with more stakeholders on this key issue of our times.