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Who we are and what we do

We are a non-profit organisation that creates tools and interventions that strengthen capacity within government, empowers citizens and improves trust and accountability in the civic space.

We have been operating since 2015, and have international reach through our projects in African cities and urban spaces, and a global presence in knowledge creation.

How We Can Help

Offerings

We use these offerings to help Civil Society.

Offerings

We use these offerings to help Partner Organisations.

Projects

These are examples of how we addressed these problem statements.

Dexter

Dexter

Dexter is a natural language processing platform that evaluates online news articles to improve transparency, equal representation and veracity of published news. Dexter is a collaboration between OCL and Media Monitoring Africa (MMA).

Learn More

How We Can Help

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Civil Society Organisation

I work for a Civil Society Organisation and would like OCL to help my team leverage data in the most impactful way.

Partner Orgs

Partner Organisations

I am part of an existing organisation and would like to partner with OCL to help us map out our systems and guide us in building and managing our data system

City Employee

City Employee

I work for the city and need a way to easily collect, analyse and/or share important data with my team and other stakeholders.

See how we apply our tools to our projects

SCODA – South African Cities
Open Data Almanac

The South African Cities Open Data Almanac (SCODA) is a platform that improves access, analysis and insight into current and comparable information about South African cities through various tools. SCODA is a collaboration between OCL and South African Cities Network (SACN).

Africa Data Hub

Africa Data Hub (ADH) collects reliable, accurate, up-to-date data on the COVID-19 pandemic in Africa and presents this in a way that is easy to understand, analyse and use by journalists.

MyCandidate

MyCandidate is a web-based application that helped South African voters see which candidates were contesting in their ward for the 2021 Local Government Elections. This information was scraped from PDFs and had never been made so accessible before.

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Our tools are used by

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Testimonials

What our partners say about us.

Over the last six years we have built new partnerships and friendships within OCL, and we have seen them go from strength to strength. Unlike others who have grown rapidly, OCL hasn’t lost sight of why we partner with them, ensuring that they have integrated our work with them as they have grown, while consistently delivering excellent work. OCL represents the best South Africa has to offer and the massive potential we have as a nation; they are professional, innovative and believe in building our democracy. Our shared vision and approach and love of beer means we are delighted to have OCL as one of our core partners and look forward to even greater things.
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WILLIAM BIRD
William Bird, Director of Media Monitoring Africa
Open Cities Lab has been a very beneficial partner in the journey to developing a smart city in eThekwini through the Durban EDGE Portal. We have always found Open Cities Lab very skilled, innovative, eager to capacitate and hard working. We would recommend any city, government institution, and partner to work closely with OCL to achieve data and technology driven decision making towards better service delivery.
Tshegang Chipeya
Tshegang Chipeya
Senior Research Advisor, Economic Development Unit, eThekwini Municipality
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Latest blog articles

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