FactCheckAfrica has won the Inclusive Futures Award, alongside a $5,000 prize, at the Summit on People-Centred Technologies in Africa held in Nairobi, Kenya.
The Nigerian civic technology and fact-checking organisation received the award for its Digital Democracy Suite, a collection of tools comprising Kedere AI, GovQuest and PowerDeck, designed to improve citizens’ access to governance information and promote civic participation.
The three-day summit, which ended on Wednesday at the Sarit Expo Centre, brought together technology innovators, policymakers, civil society organisations, digital rights advocates, funders and other stakeholders from across Africa to examine how technology could be deployed to strengthen accountable governance, peace and community development.
FactCheckAfrica was represented at the summit by its Programme Lead, Mustapha Lawal, who demonstrated the organisation’s digital tools and engaged participants and other technology stakeholders during the exhibition and innovation sessions.
The Inclusive Futures Award was one of five awards presented at the summit and focused on technology initiatives aimed at improving inclusion for women, young people, rural communities, persons with disabilities and people living in areas with limited connectivity.
The organisers said entries were assessed based on community ownership, demonstrated or potential social impact, inclusion, ethical practice, innovation, collaboration and the potential for scale.
The selection process included feedback from summit participants through the PeopleTech Passport and digital voting, as well as assessment by a review panel.
For FactCheckAfrica, the recognition places its growing civic technology work in the spotlight at a time when access to reliable information about public institutions, government spending and citizens’ rights remains a major challenge in Nigeria.
Making government information accessible
The organisation’s Digital Democracy Suite is designed to bridge the gap between government information and citizens by making complex governance data easier to access and understand.
One of the tools, Kedere AI, is an artificial intelligence-powered accountability platform that enables citizens to interact with public finance and governance information using simple language.
Through the platform, users can access and query information relating to government allocations, contracts, and public infrastructure projects.
The tool is intended to help citizens move beyond simply receiving information to using available public records to ask questions about how public resources are allocated and spent.
For a Nigerian audience, such access could be particularly relevant to citizens seeking information about projects in their communities, government spending and the implementation of public programmes.
The second component, GovQuest, focuses on civic education.
It uses interactive and gamified approaches to explain democratic processes, public institutions, governance and citizens’ rights in formats designed to be easier to understand and engage with.
The platform seeks to address a longstanding challenge in civic participation, where complex government procedures and institutional language can make it difficult for ordinary citizens to understand how public institutions work and how they can participate in democratic processes.
The third component, PowerDeck, takes the civic engagement approach beyond digital platforms.
It is a physical civic education and engagement tool designed to support grassroots participation, particularly among people who may have limited access to smartphones, reliable internet connections, or other digital platforms.
Together, FactCheckAfrica said, the three tools are intended to link access to information with civic knowledge and participation.
Why the award matters
The recognition came against the backdrop of growing debate across Africa about the opportunities and risks associated with emerging technologies.
While artificial intelligence and other digital tools are increasingly being deployed in governance, elections, civic engagement and public information, concerns have also grown over misinformation, digital exclusion, data protection, algorithmic bias and the misuse of technology.
The summit therefore placed particular emphasis on people-centred technology, with discussions focusing on locally developed solutions, community ownership, inclusion and the ability of technology to respond to real social and governance challenges.
A thematic track on Civic Tech and Democracy also examined how technology could strengthen democratic institutions while addressing exclusion, misinformation and digital authoritarianism.
FactCheckAfrica’s recognition came within that wider conversation, with its Digital Democracy Suite presented as an example of how technology could be designed around citizens’ information and participation needs rather than technology for its own sake.
Reaching citizens beyond smartphones
One of the distinctive elements of the project is its attempt to combine digital and physical approaches to civic participation.
While Kedere AI and GovQuest depend primarily on digital access, PowerDeck is designed to extend civic education to communities where internet connectivity and smartphone ownership may be limited.
The approach is significant in a country such as Nigeria, where access to digital technology varies considerably between urban and rural communities and across socioeconomic groups.
Technology-driven civic participation can otherwise risk excluding the same communities that often have the greatest need for information about public services, government programmes and their rights.
By incorporating a physical engagement component, the Digital Democracy Suite seeks to address that gap and create opportunities for citizens to participate regardless of their level of digital access.
Over 1,000 Nigerians contributed
FactCheckAfrica acknowledged the Nigeria Youth Future Funds for supporting its Digital Democracy Lab project, which contributed to the development of the solutions showcased in Nairobi.
The organisation also dedicated the award to more than 1,000 community members across six South-West states of Nigeria whose contributions, it said, helped shape the development of the digital tools.
The community input is particularly relevant to the project’s people-centred approach, as the tools were developed around identified information and participation needs rather than solely from a technology perspective.
The recognition therefore extends beyond the organisation itself to the communities involved in testing, shaping and informing the solutions.
Civic technology and Nigeria’s democracy
The award comes at a time when Nigeria’s democratic process is becoming increasingly dependent on digital platforms for information, political communication, public accountability and citizen engagement.
Social media and other digital platforms have transformed how Nigerians access political information and interact with public institutions. However, the same platforms have also contributed to the rapid spread of misinformation, disinformation, and manipulated content.
For civic technology initiatives, the challenge is therefore twofold: improving access to reliable information while ensuring that emerging technologies do not deepen existing inequalities.
FactCheckAfrica’s Digital Democracy Suite seeks to address part of that challenge by combining access to public information, civic education and grassroots engagement.
Kedere AI’s focus on public finance and government information, GovQuest’s emphasis on civic education and PowerDeck’s grassroots approach are intended to create different entry points through which citizens can understand and engage with governance.
The Nairobi recognition could consequently provide greater visibility for a Nigerian-developed approach to civic technology as discussions continue across the continent about how technology can support more inclusive and accountable democratic systems.
For FactCheckAfrica, the award adds to its work at the intersection of fact-checking, information integrity, electoral integrity, transparency and citizen participation.
It also highlights the growing role of locally developed technology in addressing governance challenges often discussed in terms of policy and institutions but increasingly requiring digital solutions.
As African governments and civil society organisations grapple with the opportunities presented by artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies, the central question remains whether such innovations can translate into meaningful improvements in the lives of ordinary citizens.
For FactCheckAfrica, the Nairobi award recognizes an effort to answer that question by putting citizens, not technology alone, at the centre of the innovation process.
By Dare Akogun
