Across many democracies, civic information exists but remains fragmented, inaccessible, or difficult for everyday citizens to use. Budgets are published but rarely understood. Candidates are listed but not easily compared. Young people and women are invited to participate but often without the tools or data needed to engage meaningfully.
The Civic Transparency and Participation Initiative (CTPI) was created to address this gap.
CTPI is a youth-led civic innovation designed to transform complex public information into clear, comparable insights that empower citizens to participate confidently in governance and public decision-making. Built with inclusion at its core, CTPI prioritizes accessibility, local relevance, and trust, ensuring civic engagement is not reserved for experts but open to everyone.
What CTPI Is
CTPI is structured as a unified civic platform with two complementary modules, each addressing a critical stage of democratic participation:
- The Know Your Candidate Election Portal, which supports informed voting by enabling citizens to access verified, comparable information about candidates and electoral choices.
- The Open Budget Portal, which strengthens post election accountability by helping citizens understand public budgets, spending priorities, and how resources flow into their communities.
Together, these modules support participation before, during, and beyond elections, reinforcing civic engagement as a continuous process rather than a one time event.
Why CTPI Matters
Across communities, especially in emerging democracies, citizens want to engage but face barriers such as low access to verified information, limited digital literacy, and distrust in public systems. CTPI responds by making civic data usable, understandable, and relevant to everyday life.
The initiative supports:
- Informed participation, enabling citizens to engage beyond sentiment or speculation
- Youth and women inclusion, particularly for first-time voters and under-represented communities
- Early accountability, shifting transparency from post-crisis reaction to proactive civic oversight
- Trust-building, through structured verification and responsible information design
Rather than replacing existing civic institutions, CTPI strengthens how citizens interact with them.
Civil society actors, youth organizations, development partners, and public institutions are invited to engage through partnership, dialogue, and shared learning. Strengthening civic transparency and participation is a collective effort.
Jedidiah Kolade
The CTPI Approach
CTPI is guided by a simple principle: civic tools must meet people where they are, the initiative adopts a participatory approach that combines civic education, verified public information, and inclusive engagement channels. Information is structured to support comparison and context, while interfaces are designed to remain usable across literacy levels and local languages. Ethical safeguards, community validation, and responsible data practices remain central to how information is curated and presented.
Modules, Leadership, and Collaboration
The Open Budget Portal is a primary transparency initiative of the Fixing Our Shared Future Foundation, designed to improve public understanding of budget allocation, spending decisions, and resource use. As a core module of CTPI, the portal benefits from close collaboration with the broader CTPI ecosystem while retaining its distinct institutional leadership.
Both CTPI modules are being developed and implemented through a closely established partnership anchored by the Lead Generation Initiative (LGI), working alongside youth networks, civil society partners, researchers, and policy focused organizations. This collaboration ensures that each module is grounded in community realities while remaining scalable and policy relevant.
People at the Centre
CTPI is shaped by young people not as passive beneficiaries, but as researchers, designers, educators, and advocates. Youth leadership remains central across research, testing, outreach, and learning, ensuring the platform reflects lived experience and local context.
Women and marginalized communities are intentionally prioritized, both in how information is designed and in how participation pathways are structured.
What This Delivers for Communities
Together, CTPI and the Open Budget Portal strengthen civic engagement by providing:
- Clear access to verified civic and budget information
- Practical civic education linked to real public decisions
- Tools that support understanding, comparison, and dialogue
- Participation pathways that encourage accountability and trust
These efforts reinforce democratic culture beyond election cycles, supporting continuous citizen engagement in governance.
Looking Ahead
CTPI is currently being piloted as a foundational civic platform, with learning from early use shaping future expansion. The long term vision is to grow CTPI into a pan African civic infrastructure that supports youth led innovation, evidence informed advocacy, and inclusive governance across borders.
This is not a finished product, but a growing civic ecosystem shaped by the communities it serves.
When citizens are equipped with trustworthy information and inclusive tools, participation deepens, accountability strengthens, and our shared future becomes more resilient.
Ekpa Stanley Ekpa, Esq.
For more details, collaborations and partnership. Kindly send an email to partner@leadgennig.com