BudgIT

BudgIT is a Nigerian civic organisation, registered as the BudgIT Foundation, that applies technology to connect citizen engagement with institutional improvement in public finance. Founded in 2011 in Yaba, Lagos, it simplifies government budgets and public spending data through infographics, data analysis, reports and presentations so that citizens can access, understand and act on fiscal information. Its work is organised around four pillars: simplified access to budgets and public finance data; monitoring of public projects for service delivery; accountability and fiscal inclusion in the extractive industries; and institutional support to government bodies, media and civil society organisations.

The organisation runs several platforms. Tracka, created in 2014, builds a community of urban and rural citizens who track and photograph capital and constituency projects in their communities and engage elected representatives to demand completion. LG Alert, launched in 2019, gives citizens access to federation account information via an SMS short code (34461) on the MTN network, reporting funds received by local governments. MyBudgIT, launched in 2020 and led by Thaddeaus Jolayemi, is a personalised platform covering FAAC disbursements, revenue sharing formulas, the flow of funds across the three tiers of government and ongoing projects at state and local government level.

BudgIT has also supported government transparency projects directly, including a June 2015 engagement by the Kaduna State government to build an Open Budget mobile portal, and it built the Buharimeter platform for the Center for Democracy and Development to track presidential campaign promises. The organisation moved its web presence from yourbudgit.com to budgit.org after eleven years on the original platform.

Founding story

BudgIT was formed in 2011 by Oluseun Onigbinde and Joseph Agunbiade, who came together as a team at a hackathon held at the Co-Creation Hub in Lagos. There they developed the idea of open data access to government spending for public knowledge, which became BudgIT. The organisation started operations incubated at Co-Creation Hub, a technology hub in Lagos.

Business model

BudgIT operates as a non-profit civic organisation funded by philanthropic grants and investments from foundations and impact funders, including Omidyar Network, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation. It delivers free public-facing platforms, infographics and reports, and provides training, capacity support and technical assistance to government institutions, media and civil society organisations.

Grant and philanthropic funding rather than commercial revenue; awards have supported programme delivery, project tracking, education-budget analysis and capacity-building services for other civil society organisations.

Traction

By its tenth anniversary BudgIT reported tracking more than 16,738 projects, monitoring completion of over 7,000 constituency projects, facilitating 15,000 town hall meetings through 36 project tracking officers, and working with 1,500 community champions across 32 states, alongside over 200 million online impressions and 10 million offline reaches over a decade. LG Alert reported over 500,000 users. BudgIT Ghana reports 650,000+ offline reach, 8 million+ online engagement, 250,000+ budget access and civic education initiatives and 600,000+ project impact, while BudgIT Sierra Leone reports 1 million+ offline reach, 36,000+ online engagement, more than 20 engaged communities and 2 supported government institutions.

Latest developments

BudgIT retired its yourbudgit.com platform after eleven years and moved to budgit.org. Its country operations remain active: BudgIT Ghana published work around the 2026 budget launch and citizen-centred accountability, while BudgIT Sierra Leone published analysis of the Finance Act 2026 and falling treasury bill rates and, in September 2025, ran a CSO training on a WASH social accountability tool in Kambia District. Its most recent MacArthur Foundation award, made in 2023, funds a training curriculum, workshops, solution labs and mentoring to strengthen the organisational resilience of Nigerian civil society organisations, coordinated with Thoughts and Mace Advisory Limited.