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BudgIT at 10: Reflections on our Milestone
Oluseun Onigbinde
An indelible and beautiful memory of BudgIT was sleeping on the couch of my co-founder, Joseph Agunbiade, watching him seek that elusive tweak that fixes our broken website again. Something needed an improvement on our website and with a three-person team huddled on the table in Co-Creation Hub, we dreamt of putting budgets in the hands of the people and working to ensure service delivery for the underserved.
It was always a reminder of where we came from as the journey to hold the government accountable was crafted in challenges but we found fortune in a community willing to keep our dreams valid. With 81 people – editing articles, tracing projects, delivering programs, sharing a tweet, or fixing a code – we have come full circle in a mission to make public resources work for the people. We have reaped the trust of our donors and partners, gained courage from our citizens, and found strength in the voices of civil society. I will be glad to share ten key points in our thinking over the last ten years.
1. Patience & Courage: We learnt that the answers that we seek would not always happen as planned. We had big dreams of taking the budgets everywhere, citizens knocking the door of elected leaders, and resource efficiency leading the way. We are not disappointed with our results but we are aware that change will take time. We understand that the context is complex and still heavily wrapped around changing social norms and rethinking the incentives. We have learnt to live with two thoughts in our head – the strength to last the next mile mixed with the urgency of now.
2. Culture is King: BudgIT went through a transition phase of being a flat organization of 10 people to a hierarchical structure that needed to manage over 75 persons and it was not an easy one. In the end, we understood the place of defining culture and emphasising it while also keeping it dynamic. The process of rethinking our performance management system, introducing a new Chief Executive, and rewriting our values was not an easy task. We had to accept that we needed a culture shift if we wanted to reach our goals. While there were mistakes, I am happy with the journey and how we have built a stronger, healthier, and efficient culture in the end.
3. Relationships: As leaders of an organisation that mainly depends on donor funding and impact investments, we had to be intentional about building relationships with our partners in the development world. It is not a coincidence that BudgIT has had five key donors – OSIWA, Luminate, Gates Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, and Ford Foundation – who had backed it at least twice. While we focus on the mission and ensure that we deliver value for money, we are always open to building relationships beyond funding. We are clear about our challenges, strides, and goals. This has strengthened our ability to make an impact sustainably.
4. Modulating the Noise Level: We might come up as alarmists to those in government but that is the essence. The issue of creating awareness requires building up the emotional energy of citizens around the issues relating to abuse of public resources. For example, we had a relentless push on #OpenNASS and were able to build the momentum out of the citizens when we observed Senator Bukola Saraki’s interest in the issue. After building that awareness, we sat down and discussed with institutions. As an organisation, we have had to combine the awareness on the outside with conversations on the inside to build the right dynamics. This has been how we understand change.
5. Building for Context: While we build, there has been an interest to “fetishise” with new technology such as creating a mobile app. However, we have always asked ourselves if it was necessary and useful for the communities that we serve. When we built Tracka – a service delivery tracking platform – it was from our understanding of the need to grow beyond nice visualization to ensure that the budget delivers for the people. We are mindful that a larger section of Nigeria just wants service delivered to them and every technology – radio, SMS, print – is valid. In the end, we are mindful that we just want to build for people with a core understanding of their realities.
6. Data & Design Matters: We have been conscious of our brand and that we must at all times be the mix of data and design. We are interested in being the voice of facts to Nigeria. This is why we try hard to bring the actual numbers to citizens and ensure that we remain a reference point where data is presented in a delightful manner. We have seen numerous organisations inspired by our effort and we are always proud to remain a pioneer of infographics in mainstreaming social issues across Africa. We are committed to the power of what data and design can do to transform civic engagement.
7. Refilling the Community: As we marched ahead with our wins, we were not unmindful that we had a responsibility to provide support to new ideas. This is why we created Civic Hive, an incubation space to bring together new ideas that need traction. We are proud of our story in the development of Gavel, one of Nigeria’s leading digital justice platforms and other support for ideas such as Fletcher Initiative, PLSI and Eduplana. We are certain that we need to intersect the capabilities of leading institutions and emerging leaders for a functional society. We have also contributed our skills to the full development of non-profits through support for data analysis, design development and platform management.
8. Mutual Partnerships: Building strong partnerships are healthy for growth and validation. We have been mindful of the importance of working with peer organizations in delivering our results in a more systemic manner. We believe that our lone solution is not the silver bullet to Nigeria’s governance challenges and we need the strength and voices of other organisations to do incredible work. These partnerships span across media, civil society, government and multilateral institutions as found relevant to our mission. We have worked intentionally with organisations such as EIE Nigeria, PPDC, World Bank, NEITI and others in fulfilling our mission.
9. Scale Cautiously: Throughout the last ten years, we have heard people ask us to scale into different territories with constant validation that our work is applicable everywhere but we understand that we aren’t trying to sell solar lanterns or offer a payment solution. Governance systems and power dynamics in a society can be complex and we need to be grounded in proper listening before we hop off to other countries. This has guided our expansion plans and we finally opened offices in Ghana, Liberia and Sierra Leone. We have decided to take time and learn the terrain while we gradually plan to open up in new spaces in the next few years. We have applied optimism and also caution in expanding our offerings and reaching out on scale.
10. Periodic Reflections: We have had pauses to reflect on issues and our role in accountability and transparency across Africa. We are always hunting how to fully measure the impact of our work and how stories are central to how to communicate our work. We have prioritised flexibility in organisational culture and approach when necessary and also ended projects when we felt it did not contribute to our impact. We are constantly reflecting on what we can do better for our society at large.
I believe that BudgIT is an idea whose time has come and I am glad to be a steward. I am fully persuaded that we have more impact to deliver in decades to come. I am eternally grateful for the gift of BudgIT.
– Oluseun Onigbinde is the Director of BudgIT and the author of The Existential Questions.