We believe
public money

belongs to the public.

Since 2012, CODE has been Africa’s leading civic accountability movement, tracking over $507 million in public funds, reaching 10 million lives across 12 countries, one community at a time.

Read The Story

Our Belief

Not a slogan. An architecture

We believe public money belongs to the public. Not to the contractor who collected payment for a school that was never built. Not to the official who approved a borehole that exists only on a spreadsheet. Not to the system that made it difficult by design to ask questions.

That belief is not a slogan. It is the architecture of everything we have built since 2012. After more than a decade of this work, we have learned that transparency alone is not enough. Information without power is just frustration. Data without organising is just data.

That is why every tool we build, every fellowship we run, every campaign we launch is designed to connect what we know to what communities can do.

Where It Started

A community that had been forgotten.

In 2012, a small community in Zamfara State had been poisoned. Lead contamination from artisanal gold mining had killed over 400 people, most of them children. International attention had briefly flared and then moved on. Government funds had been allocated for remediation. Nobody could account for where they went.

What our team found in Bagega was not simply a public health crisis. It was a community that had no platform. No mechanism to hold anyone to account. No way to be heard beyond their own borders.

We came back and built one. That is how Follow The Money was born. That is how Connected Development [CODE] began.

By the Numbers

A decade of measurable
accountability.

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Communities Reached

Follow The Money has worked in over 500 communities across Africa, documenting what governments promised and whether they delivered.

$0M
In Public Funds Tracked

More than half a billion dollars in government and donor-funded project spending tracked and publicly documented since 2012.

0M+
Lives Impacted

Our accountability movement has reached over 10 million people across 12 African countries — and counting.

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Network Volunteers

A network of over 20,000 volunteers, journalists, lawyers, social workers, and community monitors drive our work on the ground.

0k+
Active iFTM Monitors

Active community monitors across all 36 Nigerian states and 12 African countries using our iFTM platform in real time.

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African Countries

Nigeria, Kenya, Malawi, Cameroon, Liberia, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Cape Verde, Gambia, Ghana, and Sierra Leone.

Our Flagship Initiative

Africa's largest citizen-led accountability movement.

Follow The Money (FTM) is the largest citizen-led public accountability movement on the African continent. We follow public money, from federal budgets to the last mile, to the primary school with missing desks, the health centre without vaccines, the borehole commissioned but never dug.

Our iFTM platform gives over 9,000 active community monitors across 36 Nigerian states and 12 African countries the tools to track public funds and document what they find, in real time, from their phones.

We are not a research organisation that publishes findings and waits. We are an accountability movement that publishes findings and organises around them.

“

The most important resource in this work is not technology, it is trust. The trust of communities who invite us in.

Connected Development [CODE]

Accountability • Transparency • Community Power

Citizen Power

Building the next generation of civic leaders.

Through our Digital Mobilisation Lab (DML), we train young Nigerians in digital activism, open data, governance literacy, and civic mobilisation, equipping them to hold power to account for decades to come.

NomTrac empowers communities to nominate and monitor their own priority projects. Uzabe, our real-time election observation platform, enables citizens and accredited observers to submit live reports from polling units, making electoral malpractice visible and harder to deny.

Open Parly closes the distance between lawmakers and the people they represent, making parliamentary proceedings accessible to every citizen.

Education Accountability

We fight for every girl's right to learn.

We know that a girl who stays in school changes the trajectory of her community. Through our partnership with the Malala Fund, we track education budgets, monitor school infrastructure, and support Local Education Sector Operational Plans across Borno, Bauchi, Adamawa, and beyond.

In Kano, our advocacy directly led the state government to recruit 1,500 female teachers to address shortages in rural primary schools. We will not stop until every naira allocated for a girl’s education reaches her classroom.

Gender Justice

Standing against gender-based violence .

With support from the Canadian High Commission, we galvanised mass advocacy campaigns in Kano State that helped accelerate the harmonisation of the VAPP Act with the state Penal Code, a landmark legislative outcome that protects women and girls from sexual and gender-based violence.

We have strengthened over 30 SGBV survivors to become advocates in their own right. We have created analytical frameworks for measuring women’s inclusion in state budgets. We have built platforms, organised communities, advocated loudly, and we have won.

Climate Accountability

Demanding justice for frontline communities.

Through our extractive sector transparency work with Oxfam, we hold oil companies and governments accountable for the environmental and economic damage imposed on Niger Delta communities.

We track climate finance, document displacement, and amplify the voices of women and youth on the frontlines of the climate crisis. Our investigative reports name what is happening, and who is responsible.

Global Recognition

Recognised globally. Rooted locally.

UN SDG Mobilizer Award

2016

UN SDG Mobilizer Award

United Nations SDG Global Festival of Action, Bonn, Germany.

ONE Africa Award

2019

ONE Africa Award

Recognising African organisations advancing the Sustainable Development Goals.

Democracy Innovation Award

2019

Democracy Innovation Award

Council of Europe World Forum for Democracy, Strasbourg, France.

World Summit Award Winner

2022

World Summit Award Winner

Citizen Engagement category. Selected from 290 nominees across 182 countries.

Global Recognition

Recognised globally. Rooted locally.

2016

UN SDG Mobilizer Award

United Nations SDG Global Festival of Action, Bonn, Germany.

2019

ONE Africa Award

Recognising African organisations advancing the Sustainable Development Goals.

2019

Democracy Innovation Award

Council of Europe World Forum for Democracy, Strasbourg, France.

2022

World Summit Award Winner

Citizen Engagement category. Selected from 290 nominees across 182 countries.

— FOOTPRINT —

Active across 12 countries — and growing.

CODE is headquartered in Abuja, Nigeria, with active operations across all 36 Nigerian states. Our Follow The Money movement currently spans 12 African countries, with expansion underway in Uganda, Tanzania, and Pakistan.

We align our work with UN SDGs 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 13, and 17, and are verified by NGOsource as equivalent to a United States public charity.

Angola Burkina Faso Burundi Benin Botswana Democratic Republic of Congo Central African Republic Republic of Congo Côte d'Ivoire Cameroon Djibouti Algeria Egypt Eritrea Ethiopia Gabon Ghana Gambia Guinea Equatorial Guinea Guinea-Bissau Kenya Liberia Lesotho Libya Morocco Madagascar Mali Mauritania Malawi Mozambique Namibia Niger Nigeria Rwanda Sudan Sierra Leone Senegal Somalia South Sudan Swaziland Chad Togo Tunisia Tanzania Uganda South Africa Zambia Zimbabwe Cape Verde
INTERACTIVE MAP
What Comes Next

We are not going to stop following it.

Nigeria goes to the polls in 2027. Billions of naira will move through public systems between now and then — for schools, for clinics, for roads, for security. History tells us that not all of it will reach the communities it was budgeted for.

If you believe that public money must do what it promises — and that citizens deserve the tools to verify whether it does — then this is your movement too.

Join the movement

Our Stories

CODE Children’s Day 2026 Essay Competition
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CODE Children’s Day 2026 Essay Competition
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2025 Annual Report
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2025 Annual Report
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Giving for Women’s Gain: Why Investing in Women Must Actually Centre Women
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Giving for Women’s Gain: Why Investing in Women Must Actually Centre Women
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DML
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DML
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Education as Social Justice: Why Girls’ Schooling Is the Frontline of Equality
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Education as Social Justice: Why Girls’ Schooling Is the Frontline of Equality
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Prepared or Exposed? The Hidden Role of Health Funding Accountability in Nigeria
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Prepared or Exposed? The Hidden Role of Health Funding Accountability in Nigeria
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