BudgIT raises $3 million grant from Omidyar Network and Gates Foundation

According to our investigations, there are indications that BudgIT has raised slightly over $3 million in grants from the Omidyar Network and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

In 2014, the Omidyar Network invested $400,000 in BudgIT; this has always been listed on their website. But recently, we noticed an addition of $1,500,000 under the investees section for BudgIT.

Since this new addition was never formally announced for unknown reasons, we assumed it was part of the general funding. Digging deeper, we happened on the grants database of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. There we found a $1,433,993 grant filed under the advocacy program of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

This brings the total funding to $2,933,993, which is approximately $3 million. There’s a chance that more monies could be coming from other sources; time will tell.

There was no need to reach out to the Omidyar Network and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation at the time of publication as the details are already public on their websites.

All efforts to get comments from Seun Onigbinde, BudgIT co-founder proved abortive as he and his team returned a “no comment” rejoinder.

Yesterday, an article on transparency was published on the website of the Omidyar Network titled “Can transparency build trust?“. The write-up re-affirmed the Omidyar Network’s stand on transparency in governance. And in Nigeria, BudgIT is the best driver of this agenda,

Since graduating as a pioneer in the Co-creation Hub’s incubation programme, BudgIT has been quite active. With charts and infographics that have acted as explainers of the government’s actions to the common man. A deal with the Kaduna State government in 2015 following the success of Buharimeter also cemented their street cred.

This is a developing story.

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