Could Civic Crowdfunding Improve Governance in the Middle East?

(Photo: Twitter user csaila)
(Photo: Flickr user csaila)

Earlier this month, in an attempt to escape the heat wave afflicting Washington DC, I sought refuge on a bus awkwardly packed with well-dressed commuters. Almost all of the commuters were looking down, their palms glued to their gadgets, and their thumbs tapping into their virtual realities. I thought to myself: If only they would unplug themselves for a few minutes, pay attention to their immediate surroundings, and make room for more commuters entering the bus. What if there was an app for bus drivers to communicate with plugged-in commuters to move to the back of the bus?

Imagine a society in which citizens are as obsessed with their public spaces as they are with their smart phones. Instead of spending the five-minute bus ride going through friends’ Instagram uploads, commuters are checking the latest fundraising updates on the city’s bike-share system. Rather than liking someone’s photo on Facebook, commuters are donating $5 to a neighborhood association-backed project that renovates the sidewalks. In Kansas City, the online start-up Neighbor.ly is trying to turn this idea into a reality.

Neighbor.ly is a website that employs the business model known as crowdfunding – pooling money from the public – to obtain financial support for civic projects. Kickstarter and Indiegogo first popularized the idea by allowing musicians, engineers, designers, and artists to solicit money from the public for their creative works.

On Neighbor.ly, local governments and non-profit organizations have solicited tax deductible donations to build a playground, a website to help entrepreneurs navigate the application process to start new businesses, and a free Wi-Fi network for low-income houses. Donors’ credit cards will be charged only when the fundraising goal has been reached before the end of the campaign. In return for backing a project, the donors get small perks like free T-shirts and commemorative posters.

Civic crowdfunding is an innovative way to use technology to increase the efficiency, capacity, transparency, and accountability of governance. By engaging civic-minded individuals, websites like Neighbor.ly and Citizinvestor offer governments a helping hand from the people: money, expertise, and creative energy. They also allow the public to take ownership of civic projects and monitor the progress and delivery of local officials’ promises.

A pedestrian walkway in Holland that might have taken city hall two decades to complete got off the ground in three months. In the Middle East, where citizens face low taxes but rely on the bloated public sector for food and fuel subsidies, civic crowdfunding websites can serve as innovative mechanisms for accountable governance. Imagine if the millions of politically-engaged Egyptians used crowdfunding sites to improve their neighborhoods, pressure the government to be more transparent, and monitor the delivery of public services.

However, due to the lack of online payment methods and linguistic barriers, few crowdfunding websites have made their way into the Middle East. On July 4th, a 21-year-old entrepreneur named Abdallah Absi launched his website Zoomaal (“Owner of Money” in Arabic) as a Kickstarter for the Arab world. Although only ten creative projects are currently posted on the website, Zoomaal hopes to leverage the popularity of Mashrou’ Leila, a Beirut-based indie band, to gain more media coverage and attract more entrepreneurs.

Zoomaal already has the backing of four major Arab venture capital firms in the Middle East: Wamda, MEVP, N2V, and Sawari Ventures. The CEO of Wamda, Habib Haddad praised this site, saying “this kind of platform for the Middle East is something that will push the ecosystem of innovators forward. It will help democratize creativity.”

The website Yomken (“It’s possible” in Arabic) is another crowdfunding platform based in Egypt. By asking young problem-solvers to volunteer their talent and help low-tech manufacturers address technical problems, the website harnesses the creative energy of the youth to improve the private sector. And like Kickstarter and Zoomaal, Yomken solicits donations from the public to finance the production of the new line of products. If we substitute low-tech manufacturers with government officials, then we get something like Neighbor.ly in the Middle East.

The necessary ingredients to build civic crowdfunding websites are there in the region: politically-inspired individuals, a large base of generous donors, young web engineers, and high online presence. Following the military ouster of Egypt’s president Mohammed Morsi, thousands of individuals called their local banks and pledged donations to the “Support Egypt Fund.” It is an economic rescue fund set up by the media tycoon Mohamed El-Amin, and the initiative hopes to gather LE10 billion ($1.43 billion USD) as soon as possible.

However, it remains unclear how the Fund will be spent by the new government. If Egypt had a civic crowdfunding website, the country’s 31.2 million internet users could propose their own public development projects, invest in the causes they like, and track the progress of the initiatives. While the country is currently consumed by violence and political turmoil, in the longer term whatever government emerges will need to be accountable to its citizens at the local as well as the national level.

Donation-based civic crowdfunding could be a game-changer in the Middle East. Websites like Neighbor.ly and Citizinvestor do not seek to replace the public sector’s role in development projects, but they help channel the ambitions of civic-minded individuals and offer them opportunities to lend a hand to the government. Strengthening democracy in the Middle East requires inclusive political and economic processes that achieve buy-ins from the public. If citizens truly want to become stakeholders during this crucial transition period, perhaps “buy-in” should take on a more literal meaning.

Ricky Chen is Program Assistant for the Middle East & North Africa at CIPE.

Published Date: August 20, 2013