GUIDELINES

Democratic Governance in Southern Africa (SADC Region)

Civic technology and the African Governance Architecture

Overview

These guidelines provide an overview of the Call (hereafter “the Call”) launched by the  Charter Project Africa in South Africa. The main objective of this document is to enable potential applicants to understand the context of the Call, its scope, priorities, support package, application and selection process and eligibility criteria. This will enable potential applicants to write sound proposals that meet the objectives of the Call.

This Call seeks to support civil society to fulfil such efforts. More specifically, it will enable the deployment of civic technology to strengthen democratic governance, structuring their interventions to allow their own and/or citizens’ engagement with members of the AGA platform.

The mobilisation of citizens’ groups at the various national, sub-regional and regional levels in an inclusive and multi-stakeholder approach should allow for the construction of consensus positions within civil society on the ACDEG and to share them among CSOs and citizens in South Africa as well as with national, sub-regional and regional institutions.

 Applicants should propose ideas that either:

• Address problems of democratic governance (at a national or multinational level) with the primary focus of feeding into relevant policy and programming processes of at least one of the members of the AGA platform; or
• Focus primarily on at least one member of the AGA platform and enable strengthened participation of citizens and/or collaboration with civic.

The overall budget available for this Call is EUR45 000. This amount will be allocated between two or three Southern African CSOs for small grants ranging between EUR 10 000 to EUR15 000. Each organisation will receive a separate grant depending on the number of selected organisations. The program will be supported for an implementation period of up to 10 months, depending on the proposal (the duration will be confirmed at the time of contract signature). Each grantee will enter a grant contract with the Democracy Works Foundation (DWF).

Due to the moderate size of the financial support available for each recipient, the Call will give particular attention to the scaling up, adaptation or replication of pre-existing initiatives with an emphasis on incorporating civic technology – if they comply with the priorities of the Call as described above. Financial support can also be used to fund the use of civic technologies in close partnership with a citizens’ group or civil society organisation that does not have the expertise to do it alone. Although new or novel ideas may also be funded, these proposals, like all others, must demonstrate their feasibility and likelihood of success within the budgetary limits specified above.

Applicants should also submit the following supporting documents:

• Copy of registration certificate;
• List of Board members and their contact details

Upon submission of the concept note, applicants will receive a confirmation that their concept note has been received. If this confirmation is not received, please get in touch with info@civictechfund.africa, mentioning the title of this Call.

The application period opens immediately and closes on 17 April 2023 at 11:59 PM  (GMT). This means that potential applicants will have a period of approximately 2 weeks to prepare and submit their concept notes.

The online application form is available at the following Application Link.

Only concept notes submitted via the online application form will be considered.