The Department of Public Service and Administration (DPSA) runs the Data.gov.za web platform which catalogues and links to existing open data sets on external websites but also hosts data on behalf of government departments and agencies. These datasets can be used in commercial and non commercial ways.

• Civic data

The Municipal Barometer is a web-based portal that provides municipalities and people with local level data so municipalities can make informed and resolute decisions to deliver on their mandates. The portal provides people information on local demographic trends, social development, economic growth and development, environment and municipal finances graphs and tables from 1996 to 2016. The information provided is from government categories including districts, local municipalities, provinces and metros.

​How much of your work day is spent paying taxes?​

• taxes
• labor
• Decent work and economic growth

• Civic data
• Data visualization
• Budget explorers

This edition of the South African Constitution has been specially created to be easy to access, read, print and distribute.

• Parliamentary and Legislative Tech
• Constitutions

Gazettes are a critical record of South African history. They should be easy to find and use, and freely available to everyone. With nearly 40, 000 gazettes from between 1958 and 2020 available, Open Gazettes is the largest freely online collection of gazettes in South Africa.

• Civic data
• Archives
• Open data publishing portals

Open Secrets is a non-profit organisation which exposes and builds accountability for private sector economic crimes through investigative research, advocacy, and the law.

Open By-laws South Africa is a project to help South Africans be more informed about the legislation that governs them.

• Civic data
• Participatory democracy
• Parliamentary and Legislative Tech

The Civic Tech Innovation Database is a living collection of civic tech initiatives in South Africa.

• The People
• Learn about civic tech
• Civic tech catalogs

Building relationships between government and citizens, and interested in how new technologies could enable better services, communication and accountability

• Meet the others
• In-person meetings
• Conferences

DearSA is a legally recognised and constitutionally protected non-profit platform which enables the public to co-shape all government policies, amendments and proposals.

• Petitions

Providing Tools To Build Resilient Democracies.

• Participatory democracy

MyCandidate is a platform that empowers voters with easy-to-understand electoral information that anyone can access ahead of an election.

• Voting and elections
• Ballot information

With support from the Omidyar Network, the joint team worked with local researchers in Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zimbabwe to extract a snapshot of the state of digital identity, using an evaluation framework specifically designed by CIS for assessing digital identity ecosystems.

• Identity

The MyCandidate platform empowers citizens of African countries to play an active role in electoral and democratic processes during elections and strengthens civil society’s advocacy work ahead of and post elections. MyCandidate, ingests electoral candidate data, to present it in a way that all voters can understand on a widely-accessible web-based platform.

• Participatory democracy
• Voting and elections
• Voter assistance tech

The Evidence Mapping project aimed to create a common, up-to-date evidence/ knowledge base about civic tech in the African context, to improve support, decision-making and advocacy in relation to civic tech (including more broadly civil society innovation, tech for good and digital governance).

• Learn about civic tech
• Peer-reviewed research

Viewfinder is an accountability journalism project in South Africa. Viewfinder conduct long term investigations into abuses of power which impact on the public interest – specifically as it relates to the need for equality and redress – in post-apartheid South African society.

• Investigative journalism tech

Black Stripe Foundation is a media production company that produces educational television programmes and other media, one of which is the 'Big Debate', a renowned town-hall debate style TV show in South Africa.

Open Mapping Hub Eastern & South Africa's podcast

• Mapping
• Podcasts

Real411 was created to give all citizens the power to report digital disinformation during the run up to the 2019 South African National and Provincial Elections.

• Media
• Fight disinformation
• Voting and elections

Podcast dedicated to unpacking the disinfo spreading on Whatsapp

• WhatsApp
• YouTube

• Media
• Fight disinformation
• Podcasts

South Africa’s “Code of Conduct: Measures to Address Disinformation Intended to Cause Harm During the Election Period” (in draft form as of July 2020) is aimed at “every registered party and every candidate” with additional obligations under the code for how those parties and candidates must take appropriate recourse against any member, representative or supporter of that party or candidate who behaves in violation of the code.

• Media
• Fight disinformation
• Voting and elections

Research ICT Solutions Ltd. is a boutique consultancy based in Canada and South Africa. Started in 2013, we have built a select list of clients who need simple but effective tools to make better decisions. RIS targets the policy and regulatory intersection between policy makers, regulators and the private sector. Our clients range from country regulators, international donor organisations to multi-national companies like Facebook.

• guides

• Connectivity

Track developments in rhino poaching court cases across South Africa

• animals

• Civic maps

People Powered's independent expert committee scored 26 of the top digital engagement platforms

• Digital participation platforms
• Report cards and audits

South Africa's Online Budget Data

• Budget explorers

Corruption Watch is a Transparency International chapter working to fight corruption in South Africa

• Watchdogging and transparency
• Government transparency

The Black Sash Trust is a 66 year old veteran human rights organisation advocating for social justice in South Africa.

A conference in South Africa that sought to increase collaboration among players in media, technology, civil society, and business in order to improve both the quantity and quality of civic innovation in South Africa as well as other countries in the region.

• Media
• Conferences

The Highway Africa Conference is a project of Rhodes University (Makhanda, South Africa). The 24-year old event is supported by a variety of partners including Government, corporate South Africa and development agencies. The key focus is the impact of digital technologies (internet and mobile) on journalism and the media and, by extension, society.

• Conferences
• Journalism

Project Isizwe works to extend free wifi across low-income communities in South Africa and runs the Tobetsa content portal.

Open Cities Lab is a non-profit open and non-partisan organisation that combines the use of action research, co-design, data science, and technology with civic engagement, to enable the development of inclusive cities and urban spaces.

• Civic data
• The People
• Learn about civic tech

The South African Cities Open Data Almanac (SCODA) is a city-centric data portal that contains data and indicators on issues such as city demographics, productive cities, inclusive cities, sustainable cities and well governed cities. These datasets can help cities by supporting the planning, management, monitoring, and reporting needs of cities.

• cities
• Sustainable cities and communities

• Civic data
• Open data publishing portals

It is Africa’s premier repository for documents that the public need to help make more informed decisions, or that help civic watchdogs such as the media or social justice NGOs substantiate their reportage, or documents that have been suppressed or censored elsewhere.

• The Tech
• Civic data
• Media

Amandla.mobi is a platform that aims to "turn every cellphone in South Africa into a democracy tool" by using Whatsapp, SMS, USSD, Web and social networking to run multi-issue and multilingual campaigns so that people can connect and call for accountability on various matters.

• WhatsApp

• The Tech
• Advocacy tech
• Petitions

Planning4Informality is a website which acts as 'policy tracker', datatool and accountability Platform. It was designed to measure and critically assess eight South African cities' response to national targets set to upgrade 750,000 out of the total 1.2 million informal households to standards outlined in stages 2 and 3 of the Upgrading of Informal Settlements Programme (UISP), part 3 of the National Housing Code. These cities are: Buffalo City, City of Cape Town, City of Joburg, City of Tshwane, Mangaung, eThekwini, Ekurhuleni, and Nelson Mandela Bay Metro. Open Data Durban partnered with Isandla Institute to create this living tracker that enables journalists, researchers, local government, communities, and many other user groups assess where each South African metro is at in terms of housing provision and upgrading informal settlements, supporting evidence-based decision making for city housing policy.

Hashtag Our SA is a local project which aims to create a news network in all 11 South African languages, which will be created on mobile phones and Hashtag Our SA will also teach South African communities how to tell their own stories.HashtagOurStories has trained over 200 storytellers in 40 countries. The initiative's goal is to train MOJO storytellers that can produce constructive, solutions-based stories and provide more diverse news coverage.

• Media
• Partner networks

The Indigo Trust funds organisations using digital technologies to improve transparency and accountability in sub-Saharan Africa

• The Tech
• The People
• Advocacy tech

HURUmap gives infomediaries like journalists and civic activists an easy ‘plug & play’ toolkit for finding and embedding interactive data visualisations into their storytelling. The project's underlying data is quality-checked, from reputable official sources including the government Census, PEPFAR and Uwezo.

Health-e News is South Africa’s award-winning television and print health news service that has been producing news and in-depth analysis for national media since 1999. Health-e News has television, online and print clients and has a nationwide network of citizen journalists called OurHealth who are based in rural villages and small towns throughout the country.

Wazimap provides useful facts about places in South Africa

• census

• Civic data
• Civic maps

Empowering employers and employees to ensure fair wages. South Africa has one million domestic workers, with the majority of them left vulnerable to exploitation and living below the poverty line. Living Wage is a calculator based on research surrounding the basic expenses on which a domestic worker may have to spend their salary.

• labor
• Decent work and economic growth

• Data visualization

The South African Data Archive serves as a broker between a range of data providers (for example, statistical agencies, government departments, opinion and market research companies and academic institutions) and the research community. The archive does not only preserve data for future use, but all adds value to the collections. It safeguards datasets and related documentation and attempts to make it as easily accessible as possible for research and educational purposes. The Data Portal provides access to the SADA holdings of data sets. It allows online browsing according to specific collections, including author, title, subject and date. The Advanced Search facility facilitates searching by keywords. The Study Descriptions and certain documentation can be downloaded from the portal. Please order the data directly from SADA by completing an "Order Form".

• Civic data
• Open data publishing portals

rAInbow is a smart companion for domestic abuse victims, people in difficult or abusive, controlling situations and unhealthy relationships. The chatbot uses artificial intelligence and storytelling (platform provides the users with personalised, immersive stories of characters who may have had similar experiences) to help victims of domestic violence find support through prevention, intervention and access to resources. The platform is hoping to provide South African domestic abuse victims with a safe space to speak out about their situations. Since its launch in November 2018, 300,000 conversations have been started on rAInbow

Variations in usage of civic tech across four core countries (US, UK, Kenya and South Africa) and the attitudes of users towards the platforms they are using.

• The People
• Evaluate impact

DataFirst provides easy online access to survey and adminstative microdata from South Africa and other African countries to researchers. DataFirst also offers training to African data managers and researchers.The data the Open Data Portal provides datasets, studies and surverys carried out by universities, private organisations and government departments. In 2016 UCT Data First had about 37 047 online usage.

GovChat is a web platform that also uses Whatsapp and USSD to allow citizens to connect with government representatives.

• WhatsApp

• The Tech
• Govtech
• Communicating with the government

The Veza online tool is an open data platform developed by Corruption Watch with the goal of improving transparency and accountability in the South African Police Service (SAPS).

Civic tech projects can aim at changing citizen’s behaviours. Zlato from South Africa is a digital platform which rewards positive behaviour inside communities thanks to a digital currency which can be used to purchase local products, from clothes to haircuts.

Awethu puts power in your hands. This is your space to run campaigns about issues affecting the Black majority of South Africa, particularly women. If you have an idea to make your community or the world, a better place for Black women, awethu can help you make it a reality.

• Advocacy tech