Amongst other concerns, the statement reported that only 11 out of 58 government ministries, departments and agencies had websites meeting the minimum requirements of the country’s 2017 Access to Information Act. MISA Malawi emphasised the importance of easy and reliable access to public information in facilitating public participation and combating online disinformation.

Malawi National Youth in Politics (MNYP), a non-partisan, non-governmental organisation, is working to address information gaps like this, and to prepare young Malawians to step into political roles in the future.

“We believe that if we want a better Malawi, a better country, then we need to aspire for better leaders,” says Raymundo Chifundo Magangani, Executive Director of the organisation. “Ours is a platform whereby we nurture young people to take front positions when it comes to political leadership.”

The organisation applied for the Digital Democracy Innovation in Sub-Saharan Africa (DDISA) Fund under their Council Yanga Hub project. Council Yanga, which means “the council belongs to you”, is a dashboard that is currently under development with support from the DDISA team.

Starting with the Likoma constituency, the dashboard will allow users to track local development projects, including information around planned development, stalled projects and funding allocation.

“Most district councils in Malawi do not have a website whereby a young person can go on the website and share the information,” says Magangani. “To us, [Council Yanga] will be successful if all the constituencies are put into place and young people are able to follow what is happening in their community, to give feedback and participate in developmental initiatives.”

Some of MNYP’s other projects include a variety of digital tools, campaigns and online learning modules aimed at furthering the political education of young Malawians and equipping them with the skills to pursue fruitful careers in politics. Their Ndale M’manja WhatsApp chatbot supplies users with insights on how to successfully run campaigns, mobilise resources and engage in democratic leadership in a responsible and informed manner.

“An informed leader can lead in a manner that the community deserves,” says Magangani. “That’s why we want young people to be informed before they become leaders.”

An informed leader can lead in a manner that the community deserves.

In the 2019 Malawian general election, 54% of registered voters were between the ages of 18 and 35, which reflects the country’s demographic distribution with more than half of the population being under 35. However, Magangani says that only 2.8% of political candidates in that election were youth candidates, presenting a clear lack of representation of youth voices in government.

“There are a number of barriers that do not allow young people, especially women, to venture into political arenas,” he says. “That’s why we [have implemented] trainings and capacity buildings so that young people can understand that even though there are these barriers, there are also opportunities.”

By addressing information gaps, barriers to entry and by emphasising the importance of informed, responsible leadership, MNYP is preparing young people for future political success by starting today.

“We began by giving women a platform so that they can give their voices to influence decisions that affect their lives,” says Hellen Chebet, Senior Programmes Officer at KWT. “Ever since, we have kept going because we believe in giving women a chance and listening to them.”

When KWT heard that young girls in the area wanted to continue learning but lacked access to technology and guidance, they responded with mentorship, education support and digital literacy training. KWT has trained about 500 girls in basic and advanced digital skills through its Rural Gems programme, an information and communications technology (ICT) learning centre.

“Our goal is very simple: To give the young woman a chance to get opportunities online, to use technology safely to advance themselves and also to gain confidence, knowing that their views can influence decisions that eventually affect their lives,” says Chebet.

The results reach beyond the classroom. KWT has distributed about 200 cookstoves through Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), trained more than 50 peace ambassadors and offers about 20 scholarships per term to vulnerable girls through a university partnership. Communities are also taking more charge of climate action, from reforestation to running a tree nursery.

The work is not without its challenges. Power cuts and weak internet are frequent, training needs visual aids and local language to include everyone, and funding is tight. The team adapts by staying flexible and partnering with other organisations.

“Sometimes we have to take longer than the stated time just to make sure that we have achieved the goal,” says Chebet.

More recently, KWT joined the Digital Democracy Innovation in Sub-Saharan Africa (DDISA) Fund programme as a Cohort 1 grantee organisation.

“We were interested because it connected with our goals to help communities, especially the Indigenous women,” she says.

…it connected with our goals to help communities, especially the Indigenous women.

With DDISA support, KWT distributed a community survey in Elgeyo-Marakwet, then collected, cleaned and analysed the data. The team is now drafting a citizen manifesto that sets out community concerns, to be presented to county and sub-county authorities.

Through their civic engagement work, the organisation has helped women speak out and take a bigger part in public forums like barazas. Chebet says the next step is to empower them further and make sure the priorities presented to the government are followed through, with women staying active in civic processes.

The team also wants to take its digital work further. Digital literacy and empowerment have improved in Keiyo South, where KWT set up its ICT hub. The hope is to replicate that so more of the Kerio Valley benefits from a similar centre. For Chebet, the aim is for young women to feel they have a real choice, to continue their education and to choose a livelihood.

Through her academic experience and ongoing research, Mshelia was inspired to start PulsivaHub, which she describes as an AI-powered civic companion that aims to empower citizens through accessible civic education and the ability to navigate the increasing reach of AI-manufactured content in the civic space.

PulsivaHub bridges two key issues that Mshelia has identified in her work, namely a lack of constitutional literacy in everyday life, and the risks that AI-generated content poses to democratic environments.

“My personal experience is that constitutional literacy is not really a priority in practice,” says Mshelia. “A lot of us go most of our lives without ever engaging with or having even read the Constitution, and so it begs the question: If you don’t know the rule book, how are we expected to be better or more informed citizens?”

The platform creates a safe, online environment where users can submit any queries they may have regarding their country of residence’s constitution and expect informative, plain-language answers – completely anonymously. Users can currently choose from 13 African countries, but Mshelia aims to integrate the constitutions of all 54 sovereign African countries into the system.

“We envision it to be a pan-African project,” she says. “But of course, with country-specific depth.”

We envision it to be a pan-African project, but of course, with country-specific depth.

PulsivaHub can also be used to verify whether a submitted image is genuine or AI-manipulated. Mshelia says that the irony of using an AI-powered platform to counter the impact of AI in civic and political environments is not lost on the PulsivaHub team, but that it is important to keep in mind that AI has both risks and potential benefits.

“Both can be true at the same time,” she says. “So for us, it’s about leveraging AI to empower citizens to counter the contemporary issues that technology also brings.”

With support from the Digital Democracy Innovation in Sub-Saharan Africa (DDISA) Fund, PulsivaHub aims to add WhatsApp integration to the civic companion, making it more easily accessible for a larger variety of communities. According to Mshelia, PulsivaHub has benefitted greatly from the support DDISA has been able to provide, including the non-financial support.

“There is a need for support for emerging, small projects like mine because everybody starts from somewhere,” she says. “We need to speak to other civic organisations. We need to share experiences.”

Looking to the future, PulsivaHub hopes to develop their  own AI and data infrastructure that is native to the African continent and therefore not reliant on Western-based resources.

“We ask, what if something happens tomorrow that cuts your access to these tools and to these projects that we’re connecting with?” Mshelia says. “Alongside the civic companion, we are building what we call the Civic Media Intelligence, the CMI. But it’s a long-term vision.”

As PulsivaHub grows, the question that first inspired the project remains central: How can citizens hold power to account if they don’t know the rules? With a WhatsApp integration in development and more constitutions to add, Mshelia hopes to bring that knowledge within reach of communities across the continent.

Blessing Oladunjoye, Founder and Executive Director of BOFIM, says that one of the first steps towards inclusion is changing the ways persons with disabilities are portrayed. 

“Charity approach is not the best way in which persons with disability should be reported in the media. Rather, it should be about the human rights approach,” says Oladunjoye.

This approach means moving away from stereotypes in both reporting and visual representation. People with disabilities are sometimes portrayed primarily through their disability, even when it has little or nothing to do with the story being told. Oladunjoye advocates for reporting that focuses on the person, their work, experiences and expertise, rather than using their disability as the defining feature of their representation.

This extends into BOFIM’s work around information and misinformation. Through the organisation’s The Verifiers programme, journalists, young people, human rights defenders and disability advocates come together to learn about fact-checking and how to identify misinformation. This programme is particularly relevant when information affects communities that are already more vulnerable to exclusion or misrepresentation.

The organisation also works with students and persons with disabilities through education and assistive technology initiatives, recognising that having access to information is only useful when people have the tools and skills to engage with it.

For BOFIM, inclusion is not only about who can access information, but also about who is represented and who gets to participate in the conversations that follow. BOFIM wants women with disabilities to have opportunities to participate in democratic processes not only as voters, but also as advocates and candidates.

“We don’t want them to feel limited at any point in time for any reason,” says Oladunjoye.

The organisation’s awareness campaigns and commemorative events provide another avenue for bringing issues affecting women, children and persons with disabilities into public conversations.

“Doing this work, however, requires resources – something that can be particularly difficult for smaller organisations,” Oladunjoye says.

BOFIM was looking for funding opportunities when it applied to the Digital  Democracy Initiative Across Sub-Saharan Africa (DDISA) Fund. The programme has enabled the organisation to implement its work, but the support goes beyond the funding itself.

Regular communication with the DDISA team has given BOFIM a space to discuss its projects, work through challenges and receive guidance as the work progresses. The organisation has received both financial and technical support, including webinars and close communication with mentors who provide regular and reliable support. Oladunjoye says that when the organisation faces challenges, the team is able to reach out to DDISA, even through WhatsApp, for advice on how to move forward.

“We don’t just want to keep making those demands from time to time,” Oladunjoye says. “We want to see real impact.”

We don’t just want to keep making those demands from time to time. We want to see real impact.

For BOFIM, creating more inclusive civic and information spaces is ultimately about bringing marginalised groups into public life as participants with valuable perspectives and experiences to contribute – not simply as subjects of discussion.

As part of our work on the DDISA, OpenUp have been developing capacity-building resources for our beneficiary organisations. An important aspect of capacity-building is not just skills that help us improve our output, but also skills that help us build our institutions. In relation to the second area, OpenUp has been developing a bespoke grant management system for the DDISA project to help centralise the reporting information from our beneficiaries. But in doing so, we have been very cognisant of the questions of power, and knowledge, that underpin some of these activities.

The data we use to measure and communicate organisational impact have typically been developed, in the non-profit sector, as a tool for reporting to our funders. As constraints in the philanthropic funding sector compel us to begin reimagining our businesses – should we perhaps also be reconsidering our relationship to our own impact data, as a part of that organisational revolution? This paper explores what a more equitable and responsible impact data collection environment might look like for advancing African social impact activities.

This paper is primarily aimed at non-profits and social entrepreneurships as guidance in their impact measurement activities.

What is Impact Data?

The Oxford English dictionary gives two definitions of the word impact: ‘the action of one object coming forcibly into contact with another’ and ‘a marked effect or influence’. Impact measurement focuses on trying to establish that connection between action and effect. Impact measurement (and the data it generates) is connected to monitoring, evaluation, research and learning (MERL) practices that are typically used in funder reporting – though the former is more focused on what happened, and the second on tracking what is happening. So when we discuss impact measurement, we are thinking about the process of collecting and using data and information to understand how much progress your organisation has made toward its intended outcome.

The act of measuring your impact therefore helps you – quite simply – to:

1. Do good and know you’re doing good;
2. Improve your good impact;
3. Communicate your good impact; and
4. To do more good impact.

This is especially important as both funders and investors highlight the growing centrality of impact data for guiding their ultimate investment decisions, which ultimately speaks to impact data as a central component of your ultimate sustainability.

A challenge is that that measurement is generally just about your organisation, when increasingly we are trying to contribute to systemic change that involves a variety of actors. This is why researchers have posed a definition for social impact more broadly as “the result of a deliberate intervention by an individual, community, or organization with the objective of causing a positive effect on social, environmental, and economic well-being”.

The Politics of Funding

The reliance on external donor funds for operational activities can be a disempowering experience for non-profit organisations. Indigenous communities have – through considered research – helped to highlight the association between philanthropies and extraction as well, bringing to the fore not just the feeling of inequality as being based on needing donors, but also as a response to the practice of philanthropy itself. 

The discussions about donor reporting in the past were chiefly framed as administrative frustrations for communities, but not necessarily in terms of how this relates to power. Different influences in the field of philanthropy, and from communities themselves, are now beginning to challenge this framing. Feminist grantmaking principles have importantly linked the reduction of administrative burdens on applicants in the practice of reporting with equaling out inequities between funder and grantee. Changing how organisations are required to report then becomes the solution to balancing out that inequality.

But there is a major underlying imbalance that is more difficult to solve because, as Mhlambi has specifically noted in the context of data governance:

“Consent without power leads to inequality”.

The choices of funded organisations in how they participate in the reporting process are very limited. But this isn’t meant to suggest that the very nature of sharing impact data with funders is unfair, or automatically extractive (after all, there is an organisational interest in letting funders know how much impact you may be creating with their funds). Instead, it merely seeks to highlight that the to and fro of impact data between grantees and funders must be understood with inequality front of mind, so that we can imagine how that very process might be adapted to be an empowering act instead. This exchange should centre shared value – which also means sending back learnings from funders, to grantees, which is not a practice that we see much of.

If impact reporting can centre shared learning for both grantees and funders this becomes part of the solution. When we consider learning, though, a further question emerges: why are we not able to receive more collective community intelligence? What learnings are we getting back about our communities as a whole, from all our partners, so that we can take action collectively?

The Power of Your Data and Your Story

The exchange of information and data can be disempowering and extractive. Simultaneously, the sharing of data and information can be an act of agency and control – actively helping us shape a narrative, and give voice to the communities we want to help, making their needs and stories visible.

Yet the inequality lens also raises an important spectre on impact reporting – when your impact reporting is chiefly driven by the needs of your funders, you begin to “submerge and elevate” different kinds of data based on their needs that could be in opposition to the desires of the communities your data is meant to represent. Because – as change makers – we also extract data from the communities on whose behalf we are acting, and therefore also hold power (and responsibility) in relation to that role.

In this regard, feminist-driven data principles have highlighted that how we manage data we take, and how we communicate that data, must be driven by inclusion and fairness and – in OpenUp’s own developments of these principles – radical honesty. Implicit, though sometimes not highlighted sufficiently, is that the act of generating and producing quality impact data is an act of responsibility born by us given the privileged position we hold as data processors (and storytellers).

Organisational Data Sovereignty

Your organisation, similarly to governments, is a data holder – and to act with sovereignty i.e. to act without coercion, requires us to try to ensure our data practice is also sovereign. Data sovereignty isn’t necessarily about who ‘owns data’, but is often better understood by being able to understand who ‘controls’ (and extracts value and meaning from) the data we are concerned with. Data sovereignty does not exist without the infrastructure capacities required to benefit from that data – and most benefit in data is realised by its use, not simply its “holding”.

This also shows us that, even if we have data infrastructure that is independent – like our own servers, or cloud servers we know have adequate contractual protections – if we do not have the internal skills and processes that allow us to interpret that data meaningfully, and tell its story, we cannot demonstrate data sovereignty. This means developing both processes that allow you to process data, but also investing in systems (like software) that better allow you to analyse, and make meaning, from it.

For example, OpenUp (in partnership with other organisations, but also under the DDISA in particular) have been working on open source grant management software that allows people to report, and track progress, all in one place. In the longer term – and given the collective intelligence issues raised – it will be worth considering how to use open source software as a foundation for collective infrastructure as well, helping to reduce cost and maintenance burdens. Shared infrastructure can be an opportunity not just for sharing report information one way – but for exchange. In our role as “funder” partner in the DDISA, we are trying to reimagine this software as an opportunity in the longer term for also providing data back to our beneficiaries in a way they can use for their impact in the longer term.

But these needs present organisations with a significant bind. As our early surveys with our DDISA beneficiaries demonstrated, challenges exist both in terms of the financial resources required to invest in datafication and digitalisation, but also (somewhat related) not having sufficient human resources for data and digital functions. Organisations will need to transform their data governance environment as a first step toward improving their output of quality impact data – but, this investment may be worthwhile given how that data can itself contribute to organisational sustainability.

Data sovereignty also requires political sovereignty – which, at the level of organisations, may be best described as sovereignty in terms of the decisions that are taken. An organisation that cannot determine its own strategy will not be able to exert true sovereignty in implementing that strategy, regardless of what it is. This is why, in Diagram A, we have placed such some emphasis on the determination of the “data agenda” in identifying where a power imbalance in relation to data may exist.

Collecting and Structuring Impact Data

For the purposes of this brief, we will not try to unpack how to begin transforming your data governance systems in their entirety (there are, however, some useful OpenUp guides on building your broader data skills at our DDISA School for when you do have time housed here). But in considering how to transform your approach, and your position, on impact data in particular, it is worth first unpacking the peculiarities of that data.

Typically, you define your impact in terms of your organisation’s own theory of change – as this frames your ultimate goals, which is the final measure you are aiming for. This links to the more traditional experiences organisations may have had in developing MERL frameworks as part of kicking off of new programmes and projects. It is however also useful in constructing impact frameworks to link them to existing frameworks that already exist – this makes it easier for you to translate your story in terms of metrics and measures others already understand, if you can adapt them adequately to align with your own measures. Next Generation Consultants have provided a useful table on current impact frameworks of relevance to the South African social impact community in particular (though our regional partners can also use them for guidance) as:

Once you have selected a framework more broadly, and what you want to measure, you need to consider the indicators and data sources for those measures. Those who have engaged with funders will have no doubt been exposed to conversations around “outputs versus outcomes”. In OpenUp’s own MERL frameworks, we have used this simple table to help us distinguish between the key different areas which we measure as:

Ultimately though, impact moves beyond outcomes. Whilst an outcome is a finite and often measurable change, comparatively impact is a far broader concern:

“While the outcome evaluation tells us what kind of change has occurred, an impact evaluation paints a picture as to how a program might have affected participants’ lives on a broader scale”.

As you move from activity to outcome to impact you begin to see what one of the most significant challenges for impact measurement is – and that’s establishing the clear nexus between what you have done, to the change you have seen. However, you can establish that nexus using quantitative and qualitative data that – with sufficient empathy – you can translate to a compelling impact story about your work. Ensuring you are able to collect, and translate, both quantitative and qualitative data, will improve your capacities for impact storytelling.

At this point, it is worth reflecting specifically on lean data methods. These data methods focus on creating “downward accountability” in the selection of metrics, which can be seen as consistent with the idealised impact data flows (and influences) outlined in Diagram A. This idea comes more squarely from the world of social entrepreneurships, and focuses on simplifying the data collection practices, using digital tools, to focus impact data collection around a central impact question – where that question is not about what is required in reporting, but rather answering what measure will best allow an organisation to learn and adapt to better serve its communities (or impact goals).  This kind of approach is useful because it ties impact data collection and analysis more directly to overall organisational strength for improving impact – making it more directly connected to its ultimate sustainability, and therefore making it a more justifiable (and cost effective) investment, whilst also emphasising “leanness”. 

Once data has been consolidated, it may be worthwhile emphasising in the consolidation and analysis the following:

– The change created: focusing on the “before” and “after” of your activities with quantifiable measures helps to provide evidence that supports your approach, also justifying it as an investment case. Also emphasising human examples is this “before” and “after” is useful given a more comprehensible demonstration of your successful theory of action in practice.
– The connection between the individual and the systemic: demonstrating how individual successes feed into broader systemic change is important for both contextualising why an activity is a contributor to more comprehensive change, and can also act as support for replicating and/or scaling of activities.
– Sustainability and growth: demonstrating potential sustainability pathways is its own description of positive impact, because it evidences a more feasible impact pathway in the longer term. But this is not necessarily always possible, and those stories without a sustainability pathway are not less valuable – rather, it is just an advisable point of emphasis when in existence.
– Emotional and logical appeal: try and craft narratives that engage both the heart and the head, combining human stories with strong, indicative data. This of course is a more communications-focused piece of advice, but can help maximise discrete pools of data.

Putting Data Sovereignty into Impact Practice

We believe that improving your impact data processes is both an opportunity to improve your sustainability, but also your own sovereignty and autonomy more broadly. In our work on general data readiness with organisations, we have done work around the “9 dimensions” of data readiness (see Workshop 2 in our DDISA School materials), which have been simplified into the following three overarching areas:

1. Plan and protect (strategy, governance, security);
2. Collect and keep (collection, storage, technology and systems); and
3. Use and grow (reporting, AI and emerging tech, literacy and culture).

Considering those three areas, we can apply some specific learnings for impact data in particular as follows:

Gather data with purpose

– Rooted in responsible data practices, gather the data that is necessary to demonstrate your impact. Ensure this is connected to your organisational strategy.
– Be guided by your organisation’s goals, but borrow from frameworks that will also help your data talk to a broad audience of readers.
– Part of your responsibility as a custodian of data is ensuring the quality of that data – and its ability to honestly represent what you say it represents. It is also ensuring the security of the data, particularly when it relates to beneficiary data.

Exert control over data

– Invest in the right infrastructure for controlling and analysing your data, which can also simply mean investing in the design of simple processes that allow you to govern your data.
– Building internal skills for processing and interpreting data is a vital step for ensuring your data sovereignty.
– Data governance – which means constructing rules and standards around your organisational data – are also an important opportunity for embedding values like fairness, inclusivity and representativity into their very collection.
– Data governance is also an opportunity for building trust into your data from outside actors, whether it be the communities you serve or the funders you report to.

Convey that data meaningfully and grow

– Acknowledge that how you communicate your data matters (a recent internal study by the World Bank revealed that 31% of its reports were never downloaded, and 80% were never cited. Of the reports that were opened, people read at most around 20–28% of the content. Pdfs are where data goes to die).
– Use the same data, but to tell stories in different ways. Different audiences will be looking for different things in relation to your impact – and being empathetic to that will improve the likelihood it’s ultimately valuable to the community at large.
– Charts and visuals communicate instantly what text takes sentences to explain.
– Standardisation, which also means collaborating with a variety of groups in how you think about data, is a way we can increase the pool of useful data we can all learn from.

A Collective Intelligence Agenda

Whilst this paper has significantly focused on individual organisational action steps that can be taken, there may also be a broader collective consensus worth discussing for responsible data custodians. When we have discussed the importance of building your internal capacities to grow your data pools (and data projects), implicit in those strategies is the potential of data sharing and data exchange outside your organisation for that to be achieved.

Collective data pools help us to identify broader patterns. Sharing data between organisations can help us:

– Interpret our own data in a better by providing us with more information about its true context;
– Supplement your own data where there are gaps;
– Identify new learnings we may not have designed data collection for when we create our own data strategies; and
– Expand our data pools without creating more burdens on our beneficiary communities.

If we can share data, we can also potentially share infrastructure – reducing the costs that are proving to be such a digital blocker. This infrastructure would require us to agree on data standards, though not necessarily in a formal, once-off way. And there is another often underestimated organisational benefit to sharing data – the more lean, and controllable, your own data collection and processing practices are, the less the risks that exist (i.e. in relation to data protection, cybersecurity, quality control, etc.). Collective data sharing can therefore allow you to reduce your own risks by sharing the risks a bit more across organisations as you scale your data pool without having to scale your own data activities. However, for that benefit to accrue it means we don’t just need to be sure about our data practices, but that of our partners as well.

In other words, ultimately creating a collective intelligence ecosystem for impact data will rely on organisations first ensuring they have in place their own responsible data practices (which is why we foregrounded organisational data practices first). To create the right trust environment that allows organisations to share will require data governance to be a practice of each role player, and then to have a data governance strategy for the data sharing activities themselves given that each roleplayer is an existing data custodian.

There are a variety of different opportunities for advancing this collective agenda. As seen above, using shared software can be a shortcut toward creating standardised, shareable data amongst organisations. Github repositories of de-identified impact data can be established, and promoted, amongst existing social impact networks and communities. And there may even be opportunities to lobby current and past funders for better, or renewed, access to already reported data. There are a variety of avenues, therefore, for moving toward a more collective sovereign impact data agenda – but this must be founded on embedded responsible data practice.

Conclusion

This paper proposes that – for non-profit organisations and other social impact organisations – generating our MERL and impact data has often been driven by unequal relationships between organisations and their funders. Impact data may be reframed both as a way to empower our own organisational intelligence, but also as a way to contribute to collective and systematic impact (through collective intelligence).

To do that, however, requires us to build our own data sovereignty and governance, not least of all through building our data skills. We need to improve the systems – and opportunities – we have for sharing learnings through impact data, and be committed to the quality and ethics of that data. And whilst we start with our own organisations, ultimately this needs to be a collective activity for driving regional impact together.

Quite simply, our inside shapes our outside. To create a fairer data environment requires us to take charge at an organisational level for our own responsible data practice first – ultimately being guided by our own, measured vision for creating a more positive world. We need to build data power for ourselves, for our partners and for our ultimate beneficiaries.

This blog was prepared by OpenUp as part of our activities under the Digital Democracy Innovation in Sub-Saharan Africa Fund.

“Access to education is connected to access to information,” says Florence Yidma Hosea, Gender and Safeguarding Lead at SAI. “Access to information is connected to access to digital skills. And digital access is connected to whether people can safely express themselves, participate in civic spaces, access opportunities and make their voices heard.”

Access to information is connected to access to digital skills. And digital access is connected to whether people can safely express themselves…

SAI is a youth-led civil society organisation, particularly focused on issues affecting underserved communities, including young people, women and persons with disabilities. Throughout their active years, SAI has worked closely with communities to provide capacity-building opportunities that aim to further inclusive education, digital skills, gender justice and civic participation.

“While Smart Aid began with a strong focus on education and community development,  our work has evolved to respond to the challenges these communities face in reality,” says Hosea.

More recently, SAI has been running the Women at the Front of Digital Space fellowship, with support from the Digital Democracy Innovation in Sub-Saharan Africa (DDISA) Fund. The fellowship encompasses a six-week learning journey for 20 young women in Kaduna State, featuring an in-person bootcamp, virtual learning, peer engagement and mentorship.

“This programme is centered on the reality young women experience in digital spaces,” says Hosea. “We are looking at digital democracy, online safety, digital rights, technology-facilitated gender-based violence, misinformation and fact-checking and digital advocacy.”

Although Nigeria’s younger population is very active in digital spaces, young women and girls remain underrepresented, trailing behind in basic information and communication technology skills. This not only excludes them from potential career opportunities in technology-focused sectors, but also leaves them more exposed to online safety risks, including harassment, scams and misinformation.

It is against this backdrop that SAI’s Women at the Front of Digital Space project is addressing a critical social issue by tackling it at the local level. In addition to the fellowship programme, SAI will produce a digital civic participation toolkit that will be made available for anyone to use.

“[DDISA] support has given us an opportunity to strengthen our programme design, connect with a wider network, receive guidance and technical support,” says Hosea. “I think more intentionally about how our work contributes to digital civic participation.”

According to Hosea, SAI hopes to extend the fellowship’s work to local schools, other community organisations and potentially to government. Fellows of the programme will also be able to amplify the knowledge and skills they acquired within their own communities, creating a broader network.

“Our vision is to build a community of young women who can support one another, share opportunities, respond to digital challenges and continue participating in civic spaces,” says Hosea.

About the Civic Tech Innovation Network

The CTIN, based at the Tayarisha Centre at the Wits University School of Governance welcomes the opportunity to respond to this call from the SAHRC. The CTIN is a pan-African network that brings together civic technology practitioners, open-data advocates, digital rights organisations and civic actors to make public power more accountable through technology-enabled transparency, participation and data-driven oversight. 

Our motivation for contributing to feedback on this call is based on our appreciation not only of the national level significance of the construction of data centres, but on broader regional implications. We have an interest in contributing to policy-shaping dialogue in the context of digital governance, democracy and technology.

The CTIN is currently working in consortium with partners Wits Commercial Enterprise and OpenUp supported by CIVICUS to implement a project under the Digital Democracy Innovation in Sub-Saharan Africa (DDISA) Fund to support 100 community based organisations in the region with implementing digital democracy innovation initiatives. This includes projects focussed on digital governance, civic participation and public service access/monitoring. 

Background

While data centres have the potential to strengthen Africa’s digital economy, their benefits are not automatic nor their impact neutral. Their value is informed by access to reliable and affordable electricity, effective regulation, robust environmental safeguards, and the extent to which local economies capture meaningful ownership and tax benefits. And, because data centres are capital-intensive and highly automated, they may create fewer permanent jobs than expected and create an unequal distribution of benefits. For instance, profits may flow primarily to foreign cloud providers and investors, leaving local communities to bear the costs of land use, noise pollution, electricity demand and water contamination. From a human rights perspective, there are also risks of reinforcing digital inequalities; facilities may be concentrated in major urban hubs. While this can have positive impacts for connected urban markets, rural and lower-income communities may be left behind. 

Recognising the increasing environmental, economic and social footprint of data centres, it is important to outline whether and how accountability mechanisms can be factored into their development and rollout. Additionally, the question is not simply whether more data centres should be constructed, but rather under what  frameworks and guidelines, under whose oversight and ownership, powered by what energy, and (perhaps most importantly) for whose benefit?

The purpose of this submission is to:

– Identify key risks to human rights resulting from data centre developments
– Consider opportunities associated with data centre development
– Propose recommendations for rights-based governance, oversight and accountability mechanisms for data centres and,
– (To a lesser extent) explore alignment (or misalignment) of current legal, regulatory and policy frameworks with constitutional obligations and international human rights standards

The Commission’s call explicitly highlights electricity and water usage, climate and environmental justice, and community consultation as key themes. In the context of electricity – it is noteworthy that South Africa currently has a power surplus, according to national power supplier, Eskom.

1. What’s a Data Centre When it’s at Home?

A data centre is a purpose-built physical facility, ranging from the size of a single room to a large campus, that houses and operates the IT infrastructure; servers, storage systems and networking equipment. This infrastructure in turn is required to process, store, and transmit digital data and operate applications and services for businesses, governments, and cloud providers. Data centres are engineered for high reliability and security, with power supplies, advanced cooling systems and fire suppression to ensure continuous operation. 

The significance of data centres lies in being the backbone of the digital economy. Data centres centralise and secure critical business and public-sector data, enabling cloud computing and online services. They also support business continuity and availability, while providing reliable computing power required for everything from everyday enterprise operations to advanced workloads like artificial intelligence. In essence, data centres are the ‘physical homes’ of the internet and modern digital services, making them essential infrastructure for governance, commerce, and civic technology.

In 2026, it is estimated that there are in the region of 10,000 to 12,000 active data centres globally. However, estimates seem to vary widely. ABI Research forecasts that there will be 8,821 data centres in operation by the end of 2026 while other sources report higher counts: Cloudscene-based reporting and industry compilations cite over 11,800 operational data centres. A mid-2026 snapshot from Cloudscene lists 11,426 active data centres across 179 countries. While the spread may reflect different inclusion criteria, the rapid growth driven by artificial intelligence (AI), cloud computing, and digital transformation is clear.

Forecasted number of Data Centres by Region: 2026 – 2034

(Source: ABI Research)

2. Data Centre Expansion in South Africa

South Africa is increasingly positioned as a regional hub for data centres, driven by demand for cloud services, AI, digital government platforms and private sector digitisation (see data centres map). The National Policy on Data and Cloud (2024) seeks to establish a coordinated approach to data governance, cloud adoption and related infrastructure, including data.

According to a recent Financial Times article, South Africa is home to approximately 70% of Africa’s data centres, owing to its fibre infrastructure and mature financial sector. And, according to a Arizton Advisory and Intelligence, cloud computing and AI-driven investments are forecast to more than double South Africa’s data centre market to more than US $5 billion by 2031. In July 2026, the City of Cape Town reportedly gave the green light to Equinix, a United States company to build two facilities requiring about 170 megawatts. This load is reported to be close to the 189MW of total critical capacity currently operated by Africa’s largest data centre company, Teraco.

Some commentators refer to the business of data centres as a ‘gold rush’ which is indicative of the prospective value of these developments. While Eskom has about 2,000MW of capacity in cold storage that could be used, there are questions as to the extent to which proposed investments could overwhelm the current grid’s capacity. 

The debate about whether South Africa can support power-intensive facilities alongside households and other businesses is ongoing. However, rapid expansion of data infrastructure risks outpacing a comprehensive approach to a human rights and environmental assessment. And while data centres are considered critical nodes in the digital ecosystem; they come with a laundry list of considerations in terms of climate justice. This includes their location, design, energy and water use, cybersecurity and governance models. They also impact the right to (clean) water, environment and health; rights to privacy, data protection and freedom of expression. Other socio-economic rights affected include the right to housing, land.  

The SAHRC’s inquiry is therefore timely and necessary to ensure that the growth of data centres does not undermine constitutional principles or deepen existing inequalities.

It is also important to understand who the owners of data centres are; an exploration not within the scope of this submission.

3. Human Rights Impacts Associated with Data Centre Development

3.1 Environmental and Climate Justice Impacts

Data centres are energy-intensive and, in many cases, rely on significant water volumes for cooling. Globally, large scale facilities have the ability to consume as much water as 30,000 households, while global water demand could reach up to 1.8 trillion litres per year by 2030. Additionally, waste heat from AI data centres is creating local data heat island effects, raising land surface temperatures by about 2°C in areas in close proximity to facilities.

In South Africa; a context of electricity constraints (generally), water scarcity and climate vulnerability; the environmental footprint of data centres raises serious concerns for:

– Potential exacerbation of the impacts associated with El Nino conditions which include increased water scarcity and drought as well as increased pressure on energy supplies
– Section 24 of the Constitution (right to an environment not harmful to health or well-being);
– Climate justice and environmental justice, particularly for communities already facing energy poverty, water insecurity and inadequate infrastructure; and
– Socio-economic rights (e.g. water, health, housing) where data centre projects displace communities, distort local resource allocation or increase utility costs

The SAHRC should engage relevant departments such as the Department of Cooperative Governance to ensure that any data centre planning is integrated with national and provincial climate, energy and water strategies, and subject to rigorous environmental impact assessments (EIAs) that include cumulative and regional impacts.

3.2 Privacy, Data Protection and Cybersecurity

Data centres store, process and transmit vast amounts of personal and sensitive data, including information related to government services, health, education and finance. This raises issues under:

– Section 14 of the Constitution (right to privacy);
– The Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA)
– The Cybercrimes Act
– International standards on data protection and cybersecurity

Key concerns include inadequate governance over who accesses data stored in South African data centres (state, private actors and foreign entities). At a regional level,  weak oversight of cross-border data flows and potential transnational surveillance poses a threat as does insufficient transparency around cybersecurity practices, incident reporting and data breach management. There is also the risk that concentrated data infrastructure becomes a target for cyberattacks, undermining public trust and service delivery.

The SAHRC should consider whether and how data centre regulation can complement and strengthen POPIA compliance, ensure accountability for data processors and controllers, and protect against both state and non-state abuses.

3.3 Community Consultation, Public Participation and Land Rights

Research to date indicates that many data centre projects are located in or near communities where local consultation processes are weak, rushed or non-transparent. In the context of South Africa, this would undermine:

Section 233 of the Constitution and principles of administrative justice (fair, reasonable, procedurally lawful decision-making);
Rights to public participation in matters affecting the environment, land and development; and
Land and housing rights where communities face displacement, rezoning without consent, or loss of agricultural or communal land

To this end, where projects are underway or to be rolled out, the CTIN encourages the SAHRC to advocate for meaningful, early and inclusive consultation with affected communities in addition to establishing independent grievance mechanisms. Transparent disclosure of project plans, environmental assessments and expected socio-economic impacts must also form part of such processes.

3.4 Business and Human Rights Due Diligence

Data centre operators and their investors are businesses that must respect human rights as provided for under the Constitution, the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) as well as emerging international norms on tech governance. 

It must be noted that current frameworks often lack clear requirements for human rights impact assessments (HRIAs) in relation to data centre projects in addition to relative silence on labour conditions, supply chain practices and community impacts. The UNGPs, for instance, have been outlined as having limited utility for AI governance. Vijeyarasa (2025) emphasises that the UNGPs are widely regarded as the definitive normative framework governing the responsibilities of businesses with respect to human rights. However, the suitability of this soft law framework to address digital inequalities in and between the Global North and South is in question.

Concerns raised by Vijeyarasa (2025) include exploitation of workers in the global south, data owners and their digital vulnerability; climate injustice; and the rights and interests of the Global South’s innovators. While this particular paper concludes that the UNGPs are unfit for the purpose of responding to the human rights at risk of being violated in an AI-centric world, they constitute a useful framework.

This, however, is beyond the scope of the current submission. The SAHRC can play a pivotal role in urging regulators and industry to adopt mandatory human rights due diligence for data infrastructure.

4. Assessment of Current Legal, Regulatory and Policy Frameworks

4.1 Constitutional and Statutory Basis

The South African Constitution provides a robust foundation for rights-based governance of data centres, including:

– Section 24 (environment);
– Section 14 (privacy);
– Section 9 (equality and non-discrimination);
– Section 32 (access to information); and
– Sections 23–26 (labour, housing and related socio-economic rights)

The National Environmental Management Act (NEMA), the Electricity Regulation Act, POPIA and relevant water management legislation provide additional layers of protection, but these may not be adequate as they do not directly address issues related to data centre infrastructure; some of which may prove novel.

4.2 National Policy on Data and Cloud (2024)

The National Policy on Data and Cloud sets out a strategic framework for data governance, cloud adoption and related infrastructure. While it acknowledges the importance of data sovereignty and digital transformation, it does not explicitly articulate human rights obligations for data centre operators or require HRIAs or comprehensive environmental and social impact assessments. It also does not provide detailed governance mechanisms for community participation, transparency and accountability. This gap creates a risk that data centre expansion is driven primarily by economic and technological considerations, without adequate human rights safeguards. 

4.3 Regulatory Gaps and Compliance Concerns

Key regulatory gaps include the lack of a dedicated data centre regulatory framework that integrates environmental, energy, water, privacy and community rights considerations. This is important given the challenges raised in earlier sections of this submission.

Reiterating concerns relating to data sovereignty; insufficient oversight of cross-border data flows and foreign ownership of critical data infrastructure constitute issues that warrant addressing.

And, as data centres are located within the municipal sphere; limited capacity within municipalities to assess complex data infrastructure projects warrants a further concern.

Several jurisdictions and international frameworks offer useful models for rights-based data centre governance. These include the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights which establish expected standards for human rights due diligence by companies. The EU Digital Strategies and Data Governance framework emphasises data sovereignty, environmental sustainability and transparency in digital infrastructure. African Union and regional instruments include the Malabo Convention on Cybersecurity and Data Protection, which provide regional benchmarks for data governance and rights protection.

The CTIN urges the Commission to consider undertaking in-depth research into the regulatory gaps (not only in relation to municipal competence) to inform a robust, fit-for-purpose, rights-centred framework for data centres in South Africa.

5. Recommendations

We propose the following for consideration by the Commission and relevant entities interested in ensuring that the emergence of data centres in South Africa is met with concrete measures aimed at safeguarding human and environmental rights.

5.1 Establish a Rights-Based Data Centre Governance Framework

The SAHRC should engage key Parliamentary committees and relevant organs of state to:

– Develop a dedicated Data Centre Governance Framework that explicitly requires human rights impact assessments (HRIAs) as a prerequisite for data centre approvals;
– Mandate comprehensive environmental and social impact assessments as part of the process;
– Set binding standards for energy efficiency, water use, emissions and waste management and embeds transparency, public participation and accountability obligations
– Ensure that this framework aligns with the Constitution, POPIA, NEMA and international human rights standards

5.2 Strengthen Community Consultation and Public Participation

– Require early, meaningful and inclusive consultation with affected communities, including marginalised groups, before any data centre project is approved
– Establish independent grievance and mediation mechanisms for communities to raise concerns about environmental, land, water or other rights impacts
– Ensure that environmental authorisations and planning decisions are publicly accessible, with clear reasons and appeal mechanisms

5.3 Protect Privacy, Data Protection and Cybersecurity

Mandate that data centre operators:

– Implement robust data protection and cybersecurity measures aligned with POPIA and international best practice;
– Provide transparent incident reporting and breach notification mechanisms; and limit access to data by state and private actors to what is strictly necessary and lawful

In addition, the SAHRC should consider issuing guidance or policy recommendations on privacy and data protection in the context of data infrastructure, including cross-border data flows.

5.4 Enforce Business and Human Rights Due Diligence

In relation to the private sector; the Commission can recommend;

– Mandatory human rights due diligence for data centre operators and investors, including:
– Regular monitoring of labour conditions, supply chain practices and community impacts;
– Open and public reporting on human rights performance; and
– Accountability mechanisms where harms occur.

The Commission should encourage regulators to incorporate United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights aligned requirements into licensing, procurement and investment agreements.

5.5 Promote Transparency, Governance and Accountability

South Africa’s National Data Cloud Policy is intended to be executed through consultations with government, industry, and civil society. Structures such as the Data Advisory Council will oversee frameworks, standards, and collaboration efforts. The Commission can advocate for the establishment of an inter-agency oversight body (or strengthen an existing one) responsible for monitoring data centre development and its human rights and environmental impacts. This could include coordinating between departments (Communications and Digital Technologies, Environment, Energy, Water, Local Government); and publishing regular reports on compliance and emerging risks. It would also be vital to require public registers of data centre projects, including location, owner, energy and water use, and environmental authorisations.

5.6 Address Regulatory Gaps and Build Capacity

Lastly, an important task will be to identify and close regulatory gaps in current laws and policies, particularly regarding data sovereignty and foreign ownership of critical data infrastructure, cross-border data flows and surveillance risks. Also vital will be supporting capacity building for municipalities, regulators and civil society to monitor and assess complex data centre infrastructure projects.

Conclusion

The expansion of data centres in South Africa presents both opportunities and serious human rights risks. Without a rights-based governance framework, data infrastructure development can undermine environmental integrity, privacy, community rights and democratic accountability. 

The SAHRC’s inquiry provides a critical opportunity to shape policy and regulatory responses that ensure data centres contribute to inclusive, sustainable and rights-respecting digital transformation. This submission urges the Commission to use its findings to issue policy guidance and recommendations to Parliament and relevant organs of state. 

The CTIN recognises the value of convening diverse role-players where policy development is concerned with the aim of co-creating context-specific, effective solutions. 

We therefore encourage the Commission to arrange stakeholder engagements that include communities, civil society, academics, industry and regulators. In addition, we encourage the Commission to advocate for a constitutional and human rights-aligned approach to data centre governance that prioritises environmental justice, privacy, participation and accountability. By doing so, the SAHRC can help ensure that South Africa’s digital infrastructure strengthens, rather than undermines, the country’s democratic and human rights commitments.

The organisation, based in Kikuyu Municipality in Kenya, started by working with communities on water, sanitation and health. But its work gradually expanded to include data on freshwater resources, air pollution, weather and climate, putting communities at the centre of environmental data collection.

“We realized that we do not have sufficient data for effective community engagement on atmospheric and freshwater resources,” says Richard Muraya, Executive Director of the Demography Project. “So basically, the Demography Project went from a desktop kind of data journalism project to a direct community engagement citizen science platform.”

…the Demography Project went from a desktop kind of data journalism project to a direct community engagement citizen science platform.

This is what the organisation calls environmental democracy.

One of its early approaches was a simple mapping of boreholes and other water sources, identifying leaking pipes and involving communities in testing water quality. The work later expanded to communities living along the Nairobi River and around the Ondiri wetland, where residents have been involved in efforts to understand and reduce pollution.

The same idea now runs through Uhai which is the organisation’s environmental data platform. Uhai, which means “life” in Kiswahili, brings together information from air quality monitors, noise meters, weather stations and other sensors.

Some of these devices are portable, meaning citizen scientists can carry them as they go about their daily lives, collecting GPS-linked information about the air they breathe and the noise they encounter. This can help show, for example, how much pollution or noise someone is exposed to during a trip in a matatu or while moving through different parts of a neighbourhood.

The Demography Project currently works with about 300 citizen scientists and says its developing dashboard has between 3,000 and 4,000 regular users. It is also working with researchers at the University of Manchester to explore the relationship between air pollution and respiratory health.

But collecting the data is not always easy. Sensors can be expensive to buy, maintain and calibrate, and equipment placed in communities can be damaged or stolen. There is also the challenge of explaining scientific data in a way that makes sense to people who are not scientists.

The Demography Project is part of the first cohort of the Digital Democracy Innovation in Sub Saharan Africa (DDISA) Fund, which supports organisations using technology and innovation to strengthen digital democracy across the region. As a tier two grantee, the organisation received financial support alongside capacity building workshops, technical assistance and opportunities to learn from other organisations in the programme. Muraya says the support has helped the team strengthen its science communication and rethink how it presents environmental data to different audiences.

“The Uhai project has more or less been able to address these core issues by enabling us to understand the terminology and how best to engage local communities on matters of environmental conservation and democracy,” he says. “We’ve been able to rebuild our open data dashboard so that you can be able to show or speak to both a scientific audience as well as a local audience.”

The Uhai project has [enabled] us to understand the terminology and how best to engage local communities on matters of environmental conservation and democracy.

For the Demography Project, however, the goal goes beyond building another dashboard. It wants communities to become part of the process of generating the data, understanding it and using it to take action.

In the coming years, the organisation hopes to expand this work through schools and vulnerable communities. Its bigger vision is for environmental data to move beyond reports and screens and become something ordinary people can use to make decisions about the places where they live.

The cancellation of RightsCon 2026, which was set to be hosted in Lusaka, Zambia, in early May, was a tremendous blow to the organising team and all organisations that were set to attend.

OpenUp has decided to share some of the content we were going to present as a panel and workshop at the conference as part of our activities for the Digital Democracy in Sub-Saharan Africa (DDISA) Fund. You can read our article discussing the cancellation here for more insight into digital sovereignty in Africa, or read more about the DDISA Fund here.

You can also access the full workshop here, of which reading this policy brief is the first activity.

Introduction

The nonprofit sector is frequently being encouraged to develop “resilience” and “diversify its income”. Yet, the practical guidance on how to build this resilience is often lacking, as are the funds that will actually facilitate building these forms of resilience. This case study provides some experience-based advice on how organisations might diversify their income, and how to reconsider your funding and income strategies more broadly.

…the practical guidance on how to build this resilience is often lacking, as are the funds that will actually facilitate building these forms of resilience.

We connect these general lessons to OpenUp’s own history of pivoting its funding strategy to help give a practical focus to the advice, but also so that the particularities of our context are very clear. 

The OpenUp Experience

As a non-profit that was established without an endowment in 2013, from OpenUp’s inception we relied very heavily on project-related philanthropic funds to do our work. Our co-founders had both a commercial and non-profit backgrounds, but the non-profit experience had historically been embedded in traditional philanthropy-focussed non-profit fundraising. Between 2017 to 2023 we were fortunate to receive core funds from Luminate, but these funds we largely structured around programmatic outputs, with some resources assigned in attempting to productise Wazimap, our GIS tooling solution.

Our core funds were sunsetted in 2023, and our other significant funder – the Open Society Foundation of South Africa – was absorbed into OSF Africa. OSF Africa has not rebuilt the scale of its giving to the region, in spite of its restructuring occurring over quite a few years.

During 2022 we launched a new Funding Strategy for the periods 2022-2024 that focused on 1) Designing a funding strategy that supports our strategic aims; 2) Developing and maintaining income diversity for sustainability; and 3) Focussing on building a cash reserve for ensuring cash flow security. Given our successes, we launched a new Strategy for the 2025-2030 period. 

Between the financial years 2022-2023, and 2023-2024, we were able to pivot from an income split of 74% grant income and 26% client income, to 65% client income and 35% grant income. In addition, we only saw a total decline in income of less than 20%, in spite of the withdrawal of our two major funders that account for a total of over 45% of our total income. We had planned against a drop of over 30% income. This slight drop was followed by a further drop in 2024-2025, but this was finally a reflection of the fully withdrawn core support – we managed an 86% client income stream in that year.

Sustainability Strategies

Income, whether revenue or grant, should be viewed as a strategic asset for achieving a nonprofit’s intended impact. As such, it should be driven by strategy which aligns to your overall impact goals, but also so it allows your whole organisation to be able to coordinate toward the same shared funding goals. It is important that business development is decentralised and organisation-wide, allowing more hands to lighten the load, and to access opportunities that may not be visible to a single, or small group, of organisational actors.

When we treat income as a strategic asset, it becomes clearer that different kinds of income require different strategies not just for sourcing them, but also for how to work with them, to ensure a nonprofit can use them as productively as possible for its organisational aims.

…different kinds of income require different strategies…

An example of how OpenUp have categorised these simply is seen through this “Spending Guide” table:

Your Strategy also has to be shared by the organisation as a whole. When we launched our five-year Strategy, it was based on significant organisation-wide discussion (and fun data analytics). We also began an organisation-wide approach to fostering business – which can be facilitated as easily as through a weekly business development meeting (and in our case, a very active shared Bizdev Slack channel). Loading business development on to one team member (frequently in the non-profit space, the Executive Director), not only reduces the social and professional networks you are accessing, but also presents an organisational risk – business, because it is based so strongly on personal relationships – often travels when people leave.

We also began an organisation-wide approach to fostering business – which can be facilitated as easily as through a weekly business development meeting…

The final point in favour of a written Strategy is based on the old adage, “You can’t manage what you don’t measure”. Providing targets within your Strategy helps you to work toward a shared target, and also gives you a way to contextualise success (or failure, which is also ok). Reporting on that Strategy to other people – which include the organisation but also your Board – provides an extra form of accountability to help you stay on track. In developing our own Strategy, to ensure we developed feasible targets, we found case studies very helpful. In these case studies we broke down the different ways we had brought in income in recent years, and unpacked what was good, and what was bad, about the experiences for each (clearly outlining where we could control outcomes, and where we couldn’t).

Building a Business

Building Resilience 

A Strategy requires a goal. You should be creating goals for your income that centre building your resilience in the longer term, especially given the volatility of the grant funding environment. Once you have these goals, you need to make sure you are structured to pursue them. Your project and organisational management processes must adapt to the different kinds of income you want to prioritise.

You should be creating goals for your income that centre building your resilience in the longer term…

So for instance, to ensure you can manage the challenges of cash flow that come with project income, you need to have systems in place that ensure you can have a strong foresight on future income realities. In fact, in an ideal world, you would build your project and revenue income strategies when you already have a cash reserve in place – as that reserve will assist with cash flow. You also want to make sure you are tracking your invoicing well, and preparing and distributing your invoices in good time – this often has implications for strengthening your project management practices, more generally. This is a real adaptation for organisations that have been focusing on managing grant income (see further Diagram A).

Building resilience also means trying to keep lean on the organisational costs that don’t sufficiently contribute to your sustainability model. So for instance don’t invest in rent if your services are largely remotely offered; or don’t invest in local travel for conferences that can’t be allocated to specific projects, or that won’t contribute to future revenue. Think about your expenses, then, as strategically as you think about your income. 

And invest into business development. This means both making sure a number of staff have business development tasks as we mentioned earlier, but also means researching and understanding your business environment. Explore the potential of new income streams from the social economy you might not have considered before – like private philanthropy, high-net-worth individual donations, crowdsourcing, empowerment trusts, corporate social responsibility funds, etc. This segues us neatly into next considering what your different kinds of business or income could look like, in practice.

Your Value and Your Business

Firstly, it needs to be acknowledged that productisation as a form of income activity is not easy. Productisation, which centres on building income from a single technology project, is often touted by the philanthropy community as a solution to diversifying funding for the more innovation-forward nonprofits. However, building a market around a single product requires strong marketing and business development resources, as well as staffing devoted to building only that product. For resource constrained nonprofits, with broad goals, this can be inefficient (especially when contextualised against the amount of revenue that can actually be charged against a single product in market). It is, however, an income stream.

In our experience a better strategy for considering new income streams is to focus on the human resources you have, and centre your current specific value additions as what you “market”. For many nonprofits, this highlights services like training, community-building, and context-specific research – and implicates thinking creatively of the kind of entities that may be willing to pay for these great additions.

…a better strategy for considering new income streams is to focus on the human resources you have…

Particularly in the non-profit sector, people undervalue the expertise and special skills they have, because our non-profit mindset means we don’t commodify what we do. But there is an opportunity to build business through what you already know well, which also means you don’t have to get new resources in to do it (ie. Are you strong at training? Are you good at logistics? Do you have assets that are useful to others?). The challenge for non-profits though is how to do that ‘selling’ without exploiting the beneficiaries you want to serve. 

But an additional challenge is that it’s very difficult to acclimatise a market to paying for something you may have provided for free before. OpenUp has found that thinking about how those with resources can help subsidise the services we provide to those we would never want to charge can be a motivating framing. The interesting truth is that, in our experience, people often don’t like non-profits trying to act as businesses. And honestly it is hard to balance the priorities of our organisation with clients who have become very used to grant funds subsidising the kinds of help we are able to give. But that’s why it’s so important to build a community with trust and honesty, because – if we can show how we are working together to advance the communities we love – finding a way to do it together, with no party feeling exploited, is absolutely possible.

Exploring Other Income

Balancing Business with Grants

Our experience in moving to focusing more on client income has taught us something very interesting, though perhaps obvious – the pursuit of grant funding should be driven by different framings from those you use in the pursuit of business, or revenue, clients.

Philanthropies want to invest in impact (along with some impact investors too), and you thus need to be able to do that. A strong Theory of Change, and strong impact measurement, help you to tell that story well to potential funders. 

A strong Theory of Change, and strong impact measurement, help you to tell that story well to potential funders.

With your business clients, at least in our experience, the question is not about “Why fund us?”, but rather “Why pay us?”. In other words, it is much more strongly focused on your particular value proposition, and framing what your unique contribution is.

These two pursuits are not necessarily conflicting or competing – ideally in an organisation that is starting to pursue diversified funding, you do both simultaneously, and naturally. But they are not necessarily always the same thing – and understanding how your organisation could frame each of these ideas, clearly, is an important step in your business journey.

Consortiums and Partnerships

Consortiums are an important opportunity to try and access grant funds at scale. Consortia help us spread risk, access larger pools of funding, and leverage different partners’ strengths so that we appeal to a broader range of funders and improve our potential for impact. It’s also just great to collaborate: but you must acknowledge that the collaboration itself is half the work. This is why project management and collaboration can be included as specific impact areas within your actual project design, so that you are measuring actual collaboration, as you implement it on your project. This may even result in new kinds of formal partnerships, and even full mergers of organisations. 

Consortia help us spread risk, access larger pools of funding, and leverage different partners’ strengths so that we appeal to a broader range of funders and improve our potential for impact.

New partnerships can offer you new avenues for income. For instance, we have collaborated with for-profit entities, when our values align, to access tenders designed for for-profit businesses. And we have supported like-minded for-profits in accessing income through the subcontracting grants that are relevant to our shared goals.

Collaboration and Pooling

There are also more creative ways that we can collaborate and pool resources, to enhance sustainability. One method for this is for nonprofits to pool a broad array of assets, and not just focus on shared funding as above. Organisations can leverage each other’s human resources – there are functional areas of staffing that can be applied across organisations, like administration and logistics, to help share costs. Assets like buildings and hardware can be shared. These creative forms of pooled resources require nonprofits to invest in networking and stakeholder development, and also requires strong communication skills. Building networks is important both for enhancing our impact, but also improving our potential organisational sustainability. 

This brief was prepared by OpenUp as part of our activities under the Digital Democracy Innovation in Sub-Saharan Africa Fund.

References

• Growing & Sustaining African Civic Tech – A Starter Playbook. CTIN, 2024.
• Powerful, not Powerless. McCannon, 2025.
• Social Return on Investment: A guide. SoPact, 2024.
• You Are Not Alone. OpenUp, 2025.

Sovereignty is so important as a concept in policy because it is about understanding who or what has controlling power, and how countries might better maintain and secure their own power within a policy space.

The question of digital sovereignty in Africa has been well constructed within the context of data and digital colonialism, because the reality is that the Global South, including the Sub-Saharan African region, is being “computationally appropriated and siphoned” to power technologies from outside of the continent, with little safeguarding or fair economic exchange, as a result of external tech monopolies. Digital services are dominated by a handful of American firms (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft – GAFAM) and Chinese firms (Baidu, retail Alibaba, platform Tencent and Xiaomi – BATX), and these monopolies are the source of this extractive pattern (the monopolies look only slightly different with AI services). 

As part of our work on the Digital Democracy Innovation in Sub-Saharan Africa Fund (DDISA), which we are implementing in partnership with CIVICUS, the Civic Tech Innovation Network and Wits Enterprise, we have been considering the broader digital democracy ecosystem for Sub-Saharan Africa to understand the context in which beneficiaries will be implementing their Fund activities. As part of this work, I thought it would be an opportune moment to address some under-discussed preconditions we need in order to realise the digital sovereignty our governments are hoping to claim in their policies. And while there are many, I will touch on just three.

Data sovereignty is the foundation

When describing the technologies of the fourth industrial revolution, Klaus Schwab highlighted that being data-driven was in fact a key characteristic of the technologies that predominate our new economic order. The pursuit of data sovereignty by the state – which is essentially state-level efforts to exert control over data and its flow – is therefore a very foundational economic project. But the strategies to exert that control exists along a spectrum, with data localisation rules (these are government rules that mandate that data is stored in the country of origin) being one extreme version of strategy.

Whilst we don’t need to go into government strategies on data sovereignty generally, what needs to be noted is that controlling data is obviously not just about rules, but also about infrastructure. Governments will not be able to practically realise data sovereignty without the infrastructure capacities internally to benefit from that data – and most benefit in data is realised by its use, not simply its “holding”. It is unsurprising then, that when describing the foundations for asserting AI sovereignty in domestic markets through investment, researchers have prioritised a “triad” of compute, algorithms, and data.

Yet, even in Sub-Saharn African countries where there is data and digital infrastructure, much of that is in fact foreign-owned (or significantly foreign-controlled). Recent research has demonstrated that Africa is exemplified by a “technology hub hegemony” in the region, with resources disproportionately represented in South Africa, Kenya, and Nigeria. However, this investment has largely been through foreign private sector-led investment that has prioritised monopolisation of subsea cables and hyperscale data centres – in other words, ensuring externally-controlled infrastructure dominance for extractive benefit. Ownership of infrastructure truly matters for pursuing a public benefit agenda for digitalisation, which is, in fact, the base of the growing pursuit of “digital public infrastructure” in development agendas. Yet the reality is that much of African infrastructure (even beyond data infrastructure) is not locally owned.

Digital sovereignty requires capacity to enact that sovereignty

To truly control something, you need the capacity to do so (as parents everywhere will lament). And the need for foundational digital capacities in considering the question of digital sovereignty is more nuanced than simply promoting computer skills. When policy emphasises control, a realistic assessment must be made on whether or not that control can be exercised – but also across which actors that is required. As Klaaren noted when reviewing South Africa’s former Draft National Data and Cloud Policy, “over-reliance on state capability in South Africa” has often been prescient of policy failure.

In the context of digital sovereignty in particular, as I have already highlighted, infrastructure is required. But so are the technical skills to manage and utilise those infrastructures efficiently. That is a skills question that implicates the domestic workforce of countries. But technical skills are also required to ensure that the technology choices that are actually made can forward a sovereign agenda. Many African states promoting digital sovereignty agendas nevertheless make technology purchasing decisions that consistently render them reliant on external big tech companies – the vendor lock-in that frequently results must be understood as a sovereignty problem, and not just a competition problem. 

And regulatory enforcement is just as important. The Nigerian government’s recent “cancellation” of the $32.8 million fine to Meta, lawfully issued by its data protection authority in response to consistent data privacy breach against Nigerian users, exemplifies how states will need to comprehensively build the capacities of their regulators by reinforcing and legitimising their enforcement power. 

Political sovereignty for digital sovereignty

What the Nigerian example above in fact additionally highlights, is a more significant point – that digital sovereignty can not be divorced from a country’s existing political economy. In May, as part of our DDISA activities, OpenUp was scheduled to host an interactive session at the massive digital rights conference, RightsCon. Mere days before the event was held, the Zambian government issued statements unilaterally “postponing” the event, which resulted in the whole event having to be canceled. In the statement issued by the RightsCon team – and subsequent news reporting – it became clear that this was a result of interference by the Chinese government.

This is significant for understanding the realities of digital sovereignty on multiple levels – the first is that the very governments claiming digital sovereignty as a priority, are undermining the civic and academic engagement that would grow the enabling environment to enact that sovereignty domestically. 

The second requires acknowledging a far more complicated truth: That digital sovereignty requires political sovereignty. Sovereignty must be exercised not just in technology choices, but also in the political choices countries make. An excellent example of this challenge has been seen in the flurry of African countries entering into negotiations for bilateral agreements with the current US government for health aid. A central tenet of the US’ “negotiations” is providing them with priority access to African pathogen data in exchange for finance (which is also undermining the World Health Organisation’s plan to organise pathogen data access for benefit sharing). While Ghana has rejected such offers in order to exercise its data sovereignty, several other African countries have not. Very importantly, Kenya’s “deal” was only halted because of that country’s High Court granting an injunction against the agreement on data protection grounds, providing us with a powerful example of how institutional and regulatory strength can counter political attempts to undermine digital sovereignty in the region in practice.

In closing, what this moment requires of African governments that ostensibly prioritise their digital sovereignty, is understanding that sovereignty is a practice.

In closing, what this moment requires of African governments that ostensibly prioritise their digital sovereignty, is understanding that sovereignty is a practice. Claiming sovereignty in policy documents while ceding it in procurement decisions, bilateral negotiations, and regulatory retreats, is a contradiction that no framework can resolve. The work of sovereignty is daily, institutional, and contested. We should not allow the sentiment of the term to disguise the reality of the lived experience.

This blog was prepared by OpenUp as part of our activities under the Digital Democracy Innovation in Sub-Saharan Africa Fund.

The DDISA Fund is a timely initiative that offers both financial and non-financial support to civil society organisations pursuing digital democracy projects in Sub-Saharan Africa…

The DDISA Fund includes a variety of financial support for three-month projects, which include:

• 40 medium grants of R85,000 (about USD 4,700);
• 60 small grants of R45,000 (about USD 2,500);
• funding for subscriptions and events; and
• emergency organisational funding.

These forms of financial support are given further leverage through a comprehensive non-financial support mechanism, which comprises data and technological hotdesk support, as well as organisational and community support. By combining the financial and non-financial resourcing, we will be able to provide meaningful acceleration to initiatives, in spite of the constrained time period.

DDISA in context

The DDISA Fund is the Sub-Saharan African arm of CIVICUS‘ Digital Democracy Initiative (DDI), implemented locally by OpenUp in collaboration with the Civic Tech Innovation Network (CTIN) and Wits Enterprise. The DDI is represented across seven major regions of the globe, including through partners in Latin America and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).

The DDI is represented across seven major regions of the globe, including through partners in Latin America and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).

Applications for the first cohort of the DDISA Fund close on 30 April 2026, after which successful applicants will be onboarded and assisted by the local implementing organisations. The second cohort will be open for applications around June this year.

Examples from Latin America

While the DDISA Fund projects are being set in motion, let’s take a look at some of the projects spearheaded by DemocráTICa – our Latin American sister organisation – as examples of impact from the broader DDI ecosystem.

Democracia Digital

Democracia Digital is a think tank based in Lima, Peru, that explores the intersection between technology and democracy in Latin America, and is a specialist organisation within the DemocráTICa network. Peru’s most recent electoral season saw an immense increase in political polarisation stemming from online disinformation and reduced content moderation on major social media platforms.

“Today, we have generative artificial intelligence. We have deep fakes and audio fakes. Any user, any voter, could easily be deceived,” says Elaine Ford, Director of Democracia Digital.

Today, we have generative artificial intelligence. We have deep fakes and audio fakes. Any user, any voter, could easily be deceived.

In collaboration with DemocráTICa, the organisation launched a national network aimed at informing and equipping Peru’s 2.5 million first-time voters with the tools to identify and debunk AI-generated disinformation in the next electoral cycle. This network utilises social media channels to raise awareness against the spread of political disinformation, becoming an informative voice within the very spaces where disinformation is likely to flourish.

Fundación Chile Necesita ESI

Based in Chile, the Fundación Chile Necesita ESI (Chile Needs Comprehensive Sexuality Education) works to curb online disinformation around sex education that has been growing since the introduction of the Educación Sexual Integral (ESI) teaching framework. Teachers implementing ESI reported having to defend their decision to do so from claims that the policy was promoting harmful agendas.

“On top of everything else, there is a much fiercer opposition and a growing entrenchment of false ideas about what comprehensive sex education is and what it aims to achieve,” says Agustín Ramos, Deputy Executive Director of the Fundación Chile Necesita ESI.

With the help of funding provided by DemocráTICa, the organisation was able to build their online platform and provide teachers with the necessary digital tools to communicate the benefits of ESI to parents and communities, reframing it as a rights-based, citizenship-building practice.

Interventions like this are vital as steps to preserving the digital civic space as both a space safe for civic activism, and reinforcing the strength and quality of the information underscoring our civic actions.

Interventions like this are vital as steps to preserving the digital civic space as both a space safe for civic activism

Programa de Periodismo Indígena y Ambiental

“When the media chooses to serve the central government, the state, or corporations that affect Indigenous interests and rights – well, that is when we live through the worst of scenarios,” says Damián Andrada, Director of the Programa de Periodismo Indígena y Ambiental (Indigenous and Environmental Journalism Programme) in Bolivia.

When Indigenous communities appear in Bolivian mainstream media, it is often in the context of conflict, road blockades or economic loss – rarely spotlighting Indigenous stories as told by Indigenous voices. Partially funded by DemocráTICa, the Indigenous and Environmental Journalism Programme was established to train Indigenous and environmental communicators, incorporating journalism, Indigenous rights, and the rights of nature, into their teachings.

“This programme has allowed me to practice a journalism that knows the territory, that knows the struggle and resistance of its peoples,” says Juan Carlos Muy Varenas, a graduate of the programme.

To learn more about DemocráTICa-funded initiatives, listen to their three-episode podcast series, Digital Democracy in Action. The DDISA Fund aims to bring similar support to Sub-Saharan African organisations, tailored to fit our regional context and specific needs. Stay tuned for updates on our projects, or apply to become a DDISA Fund grantee today!