By Florence Syevuo and Al Kags
At a recent breakfast gathering in Nairobi, we asked each person who walked into the room to take a single puzzle piece. No explanation. No picture of the final image. Just that small fragment, handed over with a quiet challenge. As the morning unfolded, something wonderful happened. Strangers began walking up to each other, comparing edges, squinting at patterns, turning pieces this way and that. Conversations bloomed. Tables filled with laughter, questions, and concentration. And slowly — almost imperceptibly — an image began to emerge.
The finished puzzle was modest, but the symbolism was immense. Each person in that room, from every corner of civil society, held just one piece. No one could complete the picture alone. But together, something clear and coherent came into view.
We often describe the work of civil society as heroic. We run towards crises when others retreat. We raise our voices when others are silent. We gather data, document stories, accompany communities, build solutions from the ground up. And yet, despite all this, we remain too often scattered — working in silos, hoarding insight, repeating each other’s surveys, drowning in reports that don’t speak to each other.
That is the quiet crisis we must confront: we each hold a piece of the truth, but we rarely bring them together.
And it’s costing us.
Across Kenya, hundreds of organisations are collecting vital information — data about health services, education outcomes, gender-based violence, public participation, food security, civic engagement. These datasets are not theoretical. They are lived knowledge: painstakingly gathered from interviews in rural health clinics, from scorecards in youth groups, from surveys conducted under mango trees and in town halls. But too often, these insights remain hidden — stored in PDFs, forgotten on flash drives, submitted to donors and then shelved.
Meanwhile, communities continue to face the same questions, asked by new NGOs who didn’t know a baseline already existed. Advocacy campaigns are built on partial evidence. Policy briefs lack the weight of numbers. And funders, often unaware of what we already know, demand the same data in different formats again and again.
We do not suffer from a lack of information. We suffer from a lack of shared information.
It is from this realisation that the idea of the CSO Data Commons has emerged — not as a finished product, but as a collective proposition. Not as a platform imposed from outside, but as an invitation to build something powerful and necessary together.
The CSO Data Commons is envisioned as a shared digital space — open, ethical, and governed by civil society — where we can contribute, discover, and make use of each other’s data. It is a commons in the truest sense of the word: not a warehouse, but a village. A place where our individual contributions form part of something larger. A place where evidence is not locked away, but made visible. Where knowledge is not owned, but shared and respected.
This is not about giving up control. On the contrary, it is about reclaiming it. The Commons would allow each organisation to determine what it wants to share, and with whom. Sensitive information can remain protected. Anonymisation, encryption, and ethical safeguards will be baked into the infrastructure. Even if all an organisation can offer is a metadata summary — just the “what,” “where,” and “when” of their work — that alone can help others avoid duplication and build smarter strategies.
But the promise of the Commons goes far beyond technical convenience. This is about power.
Imagine what it would mean if grassroots organisations, from Kisii to Kwale, could come together around shared evidence to push for changes in national policy. If youth-led groups tracking unemployment in informal settlements could find existing baselines instead of spending months and money collecting what already exists. If donors could see, at a glance, the totality of what civil society is documenting on issues like climate justice, public finance, or reproductive health.
It would change the game.
For too long, the data that defines Africa has been collected for us, not by us. Others have cleaned, packaged, and interpreted it, often with little understanding of the nuance, history, and heartbeat behind the numbers. The CSO Data Commons is a way of reclaiming narrative authority. A way of saying: we will tell our own story — in our own voice, with our own numbers.
And it is not a new burden. Many CSOs already produce reports, conduct evaluations, fill out donor logframes. The Commons asks only that we share what we can — just a piece, just one cleaned dataset, just one open summary — and that we remain open to what others have to offer.
We understand the hesitation. We’ve heard it already.
“We don’t have a data person.”
“Our data is too sensitive.”
“We already report to our funders.”
But these are precisely the reasons we need this shared space. We are building it to be accessible. We will provide templates, onboarding, and support. We will prioritise ethical use and consent. And we believe — deeply — that this kind of horizontal accountability, among peers, is just as important as accountability to institutions.
The SDG Kenya Forum is proud to serve as the convenor of this idea. With over 350 member organisations and a long-standing commitment to inclusive, participatory development, we are well-positioned to steward this initiative, not as a gatekeeper, but as a facilitator. We are working in partnership with others, including the Open Institute, to ensure that the Commons reflects the diverse realities of our sector and responds to the needs of those working at the frontlines.
But let us be clear: this only works if civil society wants it. If you want it.
This is not a pitch to use something we’ve already built. It’s a call to build it with us. To co-design the principles, co-create the governance, and co-own the infrastructure.
We are not promising perfection. But we are offering possibility.
And we believe that if enough of us step forward — even with just one puzzle piece — we will see something new come into view: a sector that is not just more informed, but more connected. Not just more transparent, but more trusted. Not just louder, but more listened to.
Back in that breakfast room, when the last puzzle piece was slotted in and the image became whole, the room went quiet. Not out of obligation. But because everyone could see what they had helped build, and what would have been impossible alone.
That moment lingers with us. It drives us.
Now, the puzzle is on the table again. Each of us is holding a piece. Let’s not wait to see what could be. Let’s find each other. Let’s place our pieces down.
Let’s build the Commons.