This presentation provides a donor's perspective on how to think about impact in the civic tech space in Africa. I presented this at The Impact of Civic Tech Conference 2015, which took place in London and was hosted by mySociety.

1. A donor’s perspective
Loren Treisman, PhD
Indigo Trust: Executive

2. • The Indigo Trust is a UK based grant making foundation that
funds mobile and web-driven projects to bring about social
change in Africa
• The Trust focuses mainly on innovation, transparency and
citizen empowerment
• We also support innovative tech-driven projects which support
development outcomes in any social sector including the
health, education, human rights and agricultural spheres
• We believe that if people have the ability to access, share,
create and utilise information, then they are empowered to
make positive changes in their own lives and communities

3. Transparency, Accountability & Citizen Participation:
Access to Info

5. Making Sense of Parliamentary Information

6. Citizen Reporting

7. Integrating Tech Interventions Into Wider Campaigns

8. What We’ve Learnt as Donors

9. Measuring Impact: Realistic Expectations
• It’s hard to show causation
• How does it compliment other work-relevant piece of a puzzle?
• Clear Theory of Change
• Proxy Indicators
• Users-awareness-re-use of info
• Informal feedback and social media
• Group calls
• Storytelling/anecdotal evidence

10. Working With On The Ground Partners

12. Marketing: Targeting Professionals

14. • The Chairman of the ruling party writing to ask
Mzalendo to help with engagement regarding the
Youth Employment Bill
• A rep writing to ask Mzalendo to share information
about a bursary they were offering
• Requests by MPs for profile updates
MPs are starting to take notice….

15. Marketing: Increasing traffic and engagement
• Twitter and Facebook they tend to account for between
85% and 90% of all social traffic.
• In most countries analysed, Facebook is a higher driver of traffic
• In South Africa and Zimbabwe the reverse is true
• In Africa, competitions or infographics, or similar style news type
stories are shared most
• In South Africa the blogs are the most shared
• Referrals make up 5% of hits of People’s Assembly
• In Kenya promotional work e.g. Shujaaz drew traffic

18. 295,858 users on multiple
platforms

19. January
• Impressions 21,811 – a 30% increase on December
• Sessions 10,710 – a 25% increase on December
• Unique Visitors 9,104 – a 26% increase on December

20. Integrating Tech Into Well Devised Programmes

21. Integrating Tech Into Well Devised Campaigns

22. A Few Take home Messages……….
• Use of appropriate and available tech-target audience? Penetration?
• The importance of context
• Empower local activists and professionals to use tech
• Bringing together the right partners is key
• Don’t underestimate marketing and training needs
• Passionate, capable leaders and teams matter
• Consult end users at all stages of projects
• Think about interoperability, replicability and/or scalability
• Patience is needed, impact takes time

23. Thanks for Listening
Loren Treisman, PhD
www.indigotrust.org.uk
Twitter: @indigotrust
Loren.treisman@sfct.org.uk