CODE FOR TANZANIA

Code for Tanzania is a non-partisan civic data and civic technology ‘change agent’.

We use civic technologies and open data to build digital democracies that afford citizens timely and unfettered access to actionable information that empowers them to make informed decisions and that strengthens civic engagement for improved public governance and accountability.

In a nutshell, we use technology to boost active citizenry and evidence-based public discourse.

NO COWBOYS

We don’t try do all this on our own. Building digital democracies is simply too big a task for any one organisation. Code for Tanzania is therefore designed as a catalyst, that kickstarts new initiatives and strengthens the local ecosystem by investing into and working through partners.

We are also a conduit for resources and knowledge from the rest of the world, into Tanzania, through our membership of the continental Code for Africa federation, which is Africa’s largest network of civic technology laboratories and open data activists. This means we are able to give Tanzanians access to pan-African funding, transfrontier partnerships, and international leverage.

GUIDING PRINCIPLES

Code for Tanzania shares a covenant with the rest of the Code for Africa federation, based on the following guiding principles:

1. We show what’s possible.  Digital democracy can be expensive.  We seek to be a catalyst by lowering the political risk of experimentation by creating successful proofs-of-concept for liberating civic data, for building enabling technologies and for pioneering sustainable revenue models.  We also seeks to lower the financial costs for technology experimentation by creating and managing ‘shared’ backbone civic technology and by availing resources for rapid innovation.
2. We empower citizens.  Empowering citizens is central to our theory of change.  Strong democracies rely on engaged citizens who have actionable information and easy-to-use channels for making their will known.  We therefore works primarily with citizen organisations and civic watchdogs, including the media.  We also support government and social enterprises to develop their capacity to meaningfully respond to citizens and to effectively collaborate with citizens.
3. We are action orientated.  African societies are asymmetric.  The balance of power rests with governments and corporate institutions, at the expense of citizens.  Citizens are treated as passive recipients of consultation or services.  We seeks to change this by focusing on actionable data and action-orientated tools that give ‘agency’ to citizens.
4. We operate in public. We promote openness in our work and in the work of our partners.  All of our digital tools are open source and all our information is open data.  We actively encourage documentation, sharing, collaboration, and reuse of both our own tools, programmes, and processes, as well as those of partners.
5. We help build ecosystems.  We actively marshal resources to support the growth of a pan-African ecosystem of civic technologists.  Whenever possible we reuse existing tools, standards and platforms, encouraging integration and extension.  We operate as a pan-African federation of organisations who are active members of a global community, leveraging each other’s knowledge and resources, because all of our work is better if we are all connected.