Press Statement:CWCD Africa Launches ZABE 2.0, an Election Monitoring Platform.

The Centre for Civic Citizens’ Welfare and Community Development (CWCD Africa), the foundation arm of The CANs Innovation Hub Abuja, launches her Election Monitoring Platform Zabe 2.0 in Abuja on July 28, 2022. The Press Briefing and Launch Event were made possible by the Civic Tech Fund Project in partnership with the Goree Institute, charter Project Africa and European Union. In a statement by Khalil Halilu, the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of the foundation, he said that the app, known as “Zabe’’ which means (to vote in Hausa), was developed to contribute to better election management in Nigeria. According to Halilu, the idea of Zabe came from the trends happening on social media during election. which involves people rushing to social media to verify, post, and retweet. He added that the election monitoring platform would create an effective system to enable trust in the electoral system. “We created Zabe 2.0 as an upgrade to the Zabe 1.0 app in 2018. Zabe 2.0 is a cutting-edge data collection and processing system designed ahead of Nigeria’s 2023 general elections,’’ he said. In the same vein, Mr. Anthony Eromosele, the Programs Lead for the Foundation, added that Zabe was built to allow the average citizen to report from their communities what is happening before, during, and after elections and also to express their views on the ways in which the electoral process is conducted. Furthermore, with Zabe 2.0, system admins have full control of dashboard management, including analytics and user permissions. We’re very intentional about this program, bringing to bear experiences, lessons, and key insights from Zabe 1.0. Zabe 2.0 promises to raise the bar of election transparency in Africa. The system rides on the most up-to-date data collection, processing, and sharing technologies. New features include a secure and encrypted chat platform, news bulletin, survey, contact center, and voter education center. CWCD Africa has developed and deployed other digital intervention solutions over the years, including RISE, which connects people who need relief with those who provide relief; UNSUB, a digital platform that connects victims of sexual and gender-based violence to stakeholders working in the spaces where they live and BACKUP, a police accountability platform that helps identify officers tarnishing the image of law enforcement agencies. It also enables people whose rights are being infringed upon to easily gain intervention from organizations that are at the forefront of the fight against abuse of human rights.