Data

Location
South Africa
Scope of Operations & Activities
National
Sector
Non-Profit or Non Governmental
General Issues
Science & Technology
Specific Topics
Open Data
Information & Communications Technology
Links
OpenUp Website
Code 4 SA Website
General Types of Tools/Techniques
Inform, educate and/or raise awareness
Specific Methods, Tools & Techniques
Information and Communications Technologies (ICT)

ORGANIZATION

OpenUp (formerly Code for South Africa)

March 20, 2021 Jaskiran Gakhal, Participedia Team
September 16, 2017 Zikhona Sikota
May 3, 2016 Zikhona Sikota
Location
South Africa
Scope of Operations & Activities
National
Sector
Non-Profit or Non Governmental
General Issues
Science & Technology
Specific Topics
Open Data
Information & Communications Technology
Links
OpenUp Website
Code 4 SA Website
General Types of Tools/Techniques
Inform, educate and/or raise awareness
Specific Methods, Tools & Techniques
Information and Communications Technologies (ICT)

OpenUp, formerly known as Code for South Africa, is a non-profit civic technology lab which aims to use data and technology to promote informed decision-making that drives social change.

Mission and Purpose

OpenUp is a civic coding organisation that believes in the usefulness of data and data sharing. The organisation’s goal is "to promote the release of data under an open data licence to make it available to everyone who wants it...to use liberated data to improve lives and empower people to make informed choices." [1]

Origins and Development

Organizational Structure, Membership, and Funding

Specializations, Methods and Tools

The organisation works with civil society, journalists, government and straight up hackers, running workshops, hosting meetings in an effort to generate excitement about sharing data and contributing to making South Africa a better place. The organisation works a technological consult for civil society organisation by supplying technological services that assist the organisations in fulfilling their duties. [1]

Major Projects and Events

Code for South Africa ran various projects that establish platforms for data sharing. The projects provide data for a range of users: ordinary citizens, journalists, and civil society organisations. These included MapIt, WaziMap and Open Bay-Laws amongst many others.

  • MapIt is a service that maps geographical points to administrative areas. It’s useful for anyone who has the co-ordinates of a particular point, and needs to find out what regions it lies within as well as for looking up the shapes of all those boundaries. [2]
  • Wazimap, from the Xhosa word ulwazi for knowledge, is a joint project by Media Monitoring Africa and Code for South Africa that provides easy access to South African census and elections data. [3]
  • Open By-laws South Africa is a project to help South Africans be more informed about the legislation that governs them. [4]

Analysis and Lessons Learned

Publications

See Also

Black Sash Making All Voices Count Community-Based Monitoring Project

References

[1] Code for South Africa. (n.d.). About Code for South Africa. Retrieved 2017, from http://code4sa.org/about.html

[2] MapIt. http://mapit.code4sa.org/

[3] Wazimap. http://wazimap.co.za/

[4] Open By-Laws South Africa. http://openbylaws.org.za/about.html

External Links

http://code4sa.org/

https://openup.org.za

Notes