Blog articles

Co-Creating a Data Strategy Toolkit for Resilient Cities

Co-creating a flexible data strategy toolkit to empower cities in data-driven decisions and urban resilience, tailored to city needs.

September 10, 2024

Meet Our Co-Leaders: Q&A with CEO Megan Wadge and CSO Richard Gevers

Get to know our co-leaders Megan Wadge (CEO) and Richard Gevers (CSO), through this Q&A.

July 25, 2024

Designing the Future for Cities that Empower and Include

The importance and implementation of gender equality and social inclusion embedded into urban design.

July 25, 2024

Reflecting on a Transformative Year: OCL's 23/24 Annual Report

Take a look at our detailed summary of our 2023/24 year in our latest annual report.

July 25, 2024

Strength in Collaborative Leadership: Introducing OCL’s New Leadership Model

OCL is implementing a new Co-Leadership model, with Richard Gevers as Chief Strategy Officer an Megan Wadge as Chief Executive Officer.

July 23, 2024

South Africa’s New Three-Ballot System Explained: Deciding Who Runs South Africa

When you vote in the 2024 South African elections, you're participating in a process that determines who makes the big decisions.

April 8, 2024

Key Changes in the 2024 South African Elections

As we approach the 2024 elections in South Africa, voters will encounter significant updates to the voting process.

April 8, 2024

How Independent Candidates Change the Elections Game in 2024

The 2024 elections in South Africa mark a pivotal evolution in the country's democratic process.

April 8, 2024

Working Smarter, Not Harder

At OCL, we have just kicked off a 6 month SMART Work Trial for Open Cities Lab.

April 4, 2024
Urban Data

A New Era of Data Collaboration in South African Cities

South African cities are entering a new era of data collaboration, driven by the increasing availability and importance of urban data.

October 31, 2023
Cities

What Makes Cities Catalysts of Change?

Cities are not just the heartbeat of our global society but also the crucible of innovation and change.

October 20, 2023
civic tech

SCODA: The role of civic technology in addressing urban challenges

The use of technology in the civic sector has the potential to create sustainable impact and promote positive change.

September 5, 2023
Inclusion

Celebrating Women's Day in South Africa: Honouring Trailblazers in Civic Tech

Today, we honour the women in civic tech who are using their skills and passion to make a positive impact on South African communities.

August 8, 2023

Our dARTa is at Amsterdam!

Access to digital platforms could transform lives and livelihoods, data is very expensive. Take a look at how expensive it can get..

June 16, 2023
Elections, MyCandidate, Democracy, Nigeria

Find out who you can vote for in your location with ease.

MyCandidate Nigeria is an open source platform that provides access to information on who is running for public office during elections.

February 20, 2023

Joining OCL: The journey after a year

Aliasgher shares his experience of joining Open Cities Lab and everything he has learnt over the year.

December 6, 2022
GWOPA, cities programme, building government capacity, city employee, stakeholder engagement, user engagement, research, project spotlight, water loss

Approximately 50% of water losses are unaccounted for in eThekwini — how can we solve this problem?

More than 50% of the water that is purchased by eThekwini Municipality from Umgeni Water is unaccounted for. In the 2021/2022 period...

October 14, 2022
citizen empowerment, stakeholder engagement, event, youth engagement

Youth engagement and active citizenship is more than casting a vote.

Open Cities Lab (OCL) hosted a webinar on 25 June 2022 with Youth Lab ZA, Africa Matters Initiative, and Young Urbanists to unpack....

September 28, 2022
Dexter, media programme, trust and accountability in civic space, civil society organisation, data science and machine learning, user engagement, project spotlight, natural language processing

Dexter: The Media Monitoring Machine

Dexter was conceived in 2015 by Media Monitoring Africa’s (MMA) for two key reasons. Firstly to ensure that there was one place for MMA…

September 7, 2022
SCODA, cities programme, building government capacity, partner organisation, city employee, coding and development, system deployment, user engagement, learning, data portal

Everybody wants a portal… what we learned about what users actually need.

The South African Cities Open Data Almanac (SCODA) is a program that is a partnership between Open Cities Lab and the South African...

September 6, 2022
Africa Gender Data Portal, media programme, trust and accountability in civic space, journalist, coding and development, research, stakeholder engagement, web development frameworks, project spotlight, gender, google news initiative

Developing the Africa Gender Data Portal as part of the Google News Initiative Innovation Challenge

We are excited to announce that we have been selected to take part in the Google News Initiative (GNI) Innovation Challenge 2022....

August 3, 2022
research, topical research, about OCL, urban tech

Urban Data and Technology Ecosystem

The Open Cities Lab team gets to work with a bunch of different types of people, who all recognise that technology can be put to use...

May 20, 2022
Africa Data Hub, media programme, trust and accountability in civic space, journalist, partner organisation, stakeholder engagement, learning, partnerships

Lessons Learnt: Remote Working with Partners Across the Continent

The Africa Data Hub seeks to support and promote quality data-driven journalism and in turn, facilitate evidence-based decision-making..

April 1, 2022
My Candidate, community programme, citizen empowerment, community, coding and development, system deployment, project spotlight, voting, open data

How one piece of code empowered hundreds of thousands voters in the South African Local Government Elections 2021

The founder of Open Cities Lab (OCL), Richard Gevers, was all over the South African press recently talking about mycandidate.openci....

November 26, 2021
community programme, citizen empowerment, research, topical research, basic income grant

BIG Talk: More than the Basic Income Grant needs to be implemented.

BIG is a necessary vehicle to include able bodied 18–59 year old South Africans, who are currently not provided for in the grant system…

November 11, 2021
My Candidate, community programme, cities programme, citizen empowerment, community, coding and development, system deployment, user experience, project spotlight, voting

What have your experiences been leading up to the South African Local Government Elections 2021?

Abigail Kemper from Open Cities lab interviews mother-daughter duo, Liz and Sarah, about the lead-up to the South African 2021 local....

October 29, 2021
My Candidate, community programme, citizen empowerment, community, research, topical research

How Your Vote Counts

Abigail Kemper from Open Cities lab interviews mother-daughter duo, Liz and Sarah, about the lead-up to the South African 2021 local…

October 21, 2021
Cities programme, research, learning, inclusive cities

Building Inclusive Cities

The idea of an “Inclusive City” is not new. The notion that cities should be able to serve all citizens equally and in a way that....

September 30, 2021
About OCL, gender equity and social inclusion

Why Gender Equality and Social Inclusion?

A Q&A with OCL’s founder Richard Gevers and newly appointed GE&SI domain lead, Thandi Bhengu...

August 20, 2021
research, topical research, queer pride, gender equity and social inclusion

Pride in the city 2021 : 031

June is both pride month and youth month in South Africa. 29 June marks the anniversary of the Stonewall Riots in 1969 New York City....

June 30, 2021
About OCL, civic tech

What is Civic Tech?

“So, what do you do?” is a question that has become a frequent conversation starter in this period of my life. I take a quick glance...

June 1, 2021
About OCL

Our Year in Review

May is donor reporting month at Open Cities Lab and our Founder and CEO, Richard Gevers, took some time to reflect on our 20/21 year...

May 10, 2021
Open Health Procurement, trust and accountability in civic space, partner organisation, data science, research, strategy and policy support, project spotlight, event, open procurement

The State of Public Procurement in South Africa is Not Transparent

The ability to “follow the money” is only possible if transactions are recorded and published, (or if the data is leaked)......

April 6, 2021
Citizen Sensors, community programme, citizen empowerment, community, stakeholder engagement, coding and development, event, open data day, citizen science

A convention of air quality citizen scientists on Open Data Day

Open Data Day was an opportunity for Open Cities lab to gather our collective of community scientists in one room to work on our air...

March 31, 2020
About OCL, inclusive cities

Open Data Durban is now called Open Cities Lab!

Open Data Durban is proud to announce our new name, Open Cities Lab....

December 6, 2019
The Answers Platform, community programme, citizen empowerment, community, coding and development, user engagement, data pipelining, event, training, brain's trust

Durban Answers Brain’s Trust Training

A few weeks ago, we held our first training session with the Durban Answers Brain’s Trust. The purpose of this training was to......

October 20, 2017
The Answers Platform, community programme, citizen empowerment, community, research, stakeholder engagement, event, brain's trust

Durban Answers Brain’s Trust

A few weeks ago, we hosted a breakfast with some of the most dedicated, long-serving and influential civil servants and ex-civil....

September 8, 2017
The Answers Platform, community programme, citizen empowerment, community, user engagement, research, user experience, project spotlight, Durban Metro Police fines, mental health

The Question of Traffic Fines | Durban Answers

This past February, I got a ticket from Metro Police for not having a current license on my car. Due to the manic nature of life.....

August 25, 2017
citizen sensors, community, citizen empowerment, stakeholder engagement, event, user experience, citizen science

Our Day with Open Data Durban

22 July 2017 was indeed a memorable day for me — a fun-filled adventure that was also educational at the same time....

August 16, 2017
The Answers Platform, community, citizen empowerment, user engagement, learning, design brief

How to write a good design brief

A non-techy, a developer, and a designer walk into a bar…

July 20, 2017
Medicine Prices Widget, media programme, citizen empowerment, community, coding and development, about OCL, training, immersive learning

Immersive Learning | Joining the ODD Team for a Month

Three months ago, I arrived in Durban to study South African social and political transformation at the School for International Trainin

July 5, 2017
SCODA, cities programme, building government capacity, partner organisation, coding and development, data pipelining, data science, learning, information architecture design

Developing​ ​a​ ​Data​ ​Platform​ ​for​ ​Cities:​ ​Multiple​ ​Data-sources

In my previous post, “Developing a Data Platform for Cities: An Introduction”, I described four major challenges that data-science....

June 30, 2017
The Answers Platform, community programme, citizen empowerment, community, stakeholder engagement, research, user engagement, event

Co-creating Durban Answers

We’ve been running our #AskDurban campaign for about 2 weeks now, and we’ve gotten quite a few interesting submissions of “how-do-I”....

May 22, 2017
SCODA, cities programme, building government capacity, partner organisation, coding and development, data science, system deployment, web development frameworks, learning, project spotlight, data management

Developing A Data Platform for Cities: An Introduction

In November 2016, Open Data Durban (ODD) embarked on its largest project to date, the first phase of development for a data....

May 13, 2017
about OCL, training, user design

Team Training : Visual Storytelling

Open Data Durban’s team has a weekly team training session every Friday afternoon. The purpose of team training is to develop and share

May 5, 2017
The Answers Platform, community programme, citizen empowerment, community, research, user engagement, coding and development, event, write-a-thon

#AskDurban

The plan for Durban Answers is quickly taking shape. In the previous blog post, I briefly mentioned we would be kicking off Durban....

April 13, 2017
citizen sensors, community, citizen empowerment, stakeholder engagement, event, Open Data Day

Open Data Day 2017

Open Data Durban in partnership with The MakerSpace Foundation hosted International Open Data Day in a dual-charged effort to ignite....

March 13, 2017

The Story So Far

Whether you discovered this site by chance, or have some idea of what Open Data Durban is about, I thought it would be good to give the

March 15, 2016
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