Why is everyone reinventing the wheel? Massive amounts of money and time are being wasted on rebuilding solutions for digital democracies and open data. africanCOMMONS showcases carefully selected best-of-breed open source civic technologies that have already been ‘battle tested’ elsewhere, for possible re-use in countries across the continent.

africanCOMMONS is a carefully curated collection of the world’s best open source software for civic technologies, compatible with our environment, along with a tactical CivicPatterns ‘playbook’ to help digital activists save time, money, and effort. The collection is designed to help citizens, organisations, and governments re-use both code and data for their own projects, free-of-charge, in the most cost-effective way possible to ensure that the bulk of their project budgets are reserved for actual civic engagement rather than technology.