Connected Development

From classrooms to health centres, from climate commitments to public budgets, one question connects our work: Are public resources improving people’s lives? 🌍✊🏾

Connected Development (CODE) is excited to be represented at by our Founder, Hamzat B. Lawal, bringing community priorities into global conversations on girls’ education, climate change, governance, and accountability.

As a Malala Fund Education Champion, he will share lessons from our girl-child education advocacy in North-East Nigeria and exchange insights with members of the Debt for Justice Alliance.

These conversations connect to our work through Follow The Money: empowering communities to track public resources and demand better schools, functioning health services, safe water, and accountable climate action.

More than ever, global commitments must deliver improvements that communities can see and experience.

37 lives lost in custody. We cannot look away.

CODE is calling for accountability over the reported deaths of 37 informal miners in Niger State, and for lasting reforms that address the deeper challenges within Nigeria’s mining sector.

Protect lives. Ensure accountability. Fix the system.

Read our full statement.

🎉 15 YEARS OF UNSTOPPABLE IMPACT 🎉

Today, we’re shouting out a true partner in the civic tech space, happy 15th anniversary to BudgIT.

From simplifying complex public finance data to empowering everyday citizens with tools to demand accountability in their communities, BudgIT has redefined what civic transparency looks like in Nigeria and across Africa.

At Connected Development (CODE), we’re proud to walk alongside a partner so deeply committed to open governance, fiscal tracking, and citizen empowerment.

From all of us, here’s to 15 years of opening the books, driving accountability, and making citizens’ voices count! 🥂

From participating in democracy to having a meaningful voice in how decisions are made. This should be the reality of young leader.

Last week in Dakar, Senegal, Connected Development’s Director of Governance, Emmanuel Njoku, joined young leaders from across West Africa for a regional dialogue convened by ECOWAS in collaboration with Legis360.

Drawing from CODE’s governance and civic participation work, Emmanuel spoke about the need for young people to organise, build alliances and political capital, seek mentorship, contest elections, negotiate, and engage consistently where decisions are made.

For us at CODE, this is part of building a democracy where young people are not only heard but have meaningful opportunities to help shape the decisions that affect their lives and communities.

A well-designed programme can still fall short if implementation breaks down where it matters most: in the communities it was designed to serve. For early childhood development, that gap can shape a child’s opportunities to learn, grow and thrive.

Earlier this week, Connected Development (CODE), represented by our Programs Officer, Abdulmalik Yahya, participated in a stakeholder convening organised by the Open Government Partnership (OGP) Nigeria National Secretariat on institutionalising the World Bank-supported Early Childhood Development Programme.

The conversation focused on how do we translate programme commitments into lasting improvements for children and caregivers, particularly at the state and community levels?

For CODE, this requires accountability to be built into implementation from the start. Funding should be traceable, implementation should be transparent and open to independent scrutiny, and communities should have meaningful opportunities to shape priorities, monitor delivery and demand action when commitments are not met.

Because institutionalising a programme should mean more than embedding it in government structures. It should mean building systems that families can trust and improvements that children can experience.

7 days to go until “Off The Record with CODE”.

Some conversations deserve more than a headline, a quick comment, or a heated group chat. They deserve depth. 🎙️

On 24 September 2026, we’re bringing experts and citizens together to unpack the issues shaping our lives, ask difficult questions, and make room for perspectives that too often go unheard.

You’ve seen the invitation. Now bring your voice to the conversation.

Register via 🎟️ https://www.eventbrite.com/e/off-the-record-with-connected-development-code-tickets-2001346997745?aff=oddtdtcreator ⁠ or scan the QR code.

Across selected local governments in Sokoto State, Connected Development’s Sokoto Tracking and Accountability for Equitable Immunization Project (S-TRACE) team is going beyond merely identifying zero-dose children.

We are actively collaborating with caregivers, health workers, and community stakeholders to uncover and address the barriers preventing children from accessing routine immunization.

At health facilities, the team systematically reviews immunization records and outreach plans, evaluates cold-chain equipment, and engages frontline workers to pinpoint gaps in service delivery and uncover opportunities for improvement.

Finding a zero-dose child is only part of our mission. We are committed to strengthening the entire system around that child, ensuring accurate records, reliable vaccine storage, effective outreach, and robust connections between health facilities and the communities they serve.

This is how we reach every child, by understanding and overcoming the reasons some children are missed.