The SACE Project is supporting the Youth Alive Foundation in Southern Nigeria to deploy the use of a digital game to strengthen public awareness, engagement, discourse, and support for issues that improve transparency, accountability and good governance in a cool, fun and innovative way. The digital game is a mobile game app and is to serve as a learning tool for young people and public institutions on governance: the structures, processes and activities with key highlight of the role of citizens in improving governance and engaging in the governance process. The game is called EXCELLENCY inspired from the words “Your Excellency” which is used to address governors and presidents and to make a statement on aspiring for excellence in governance. EXCELLENCY is designed to have players play the role of active citizens first before playing the role of an executive through the three tiers of government in Nigeria: local government, state government and federal government.
The game is currently designed using the Nigerian geography. It will have the map of Nigeria divided into 6 geopolitical zones with 36 states and 774 local governments’ areas as the playing scene. It will allow players to choose from a list, their state and local government.
The user’s experience is a major foundation in creating a sleek and smooth user-interface with 4 core components in its user interface: Easy to understand, Lively graphics, Simple language, and Exciting.
The game has 3 stages and 9 levels in which a player can progress through. The stages are complaint with the Nigerian government structure. The stages are: Citizenship – Stage 1, Chairmanship – Stage 2, Governorship – Stage 3. The three stages each have 3 levels under and as the game progresses, it gets more complex and more challenging.
The gaming platform is a story--‐based game with multiple scenarios presented to users around different target sectors of civic education i.e. Health, Education, Security, Policy development, Environment, Amenities, Agriculture, Public Finance, Gender and Social Inclusion of Youths. The game’s stories are broken into segments that will be interspaced with regularly occurring challenges/tasks which the player would have to overcome to progress within the game. These tasks are designed to gamify the core political activities identified. Stars and accomplishment will be awarded as the players demonstrate their adherence to the principles of Good Governance such as participation, accountability and transparency. The game has real world engagements where players can run campaigns and get their friends on Facebook to support their issue campaigns. The game would also present tie-in opportunities for real world engagement with political/governance issues via the game community site integrated with the game.
The player is expected to gain points, stars and badges first as an Engaged/Active Citizen. He will be presented with citizenship challenges and situations. The player will also have the task of campaigning for any issue of his choice. The issue he chooses at the beginning is the issue he builds his campaign around for the entire citizen stage. There is progress bar on tasks leading to public awareness, fund raising and support from leaders for his cause. Also as a citizen, the player will have tasks on his constitutional rights, policies and tools for participation in governance.
Aside the cost associated with developing the app, other cost will go into popularizing the gaming app for a period of time. Though the app will be integrated with Facebook and it is expected that as the game gets more popular and receives media traction it will systematically increase its user base and the app will take a life of its own as it is expected that users will download and share the app with friends.
The gaming app is expected to be implemented in Nigeria. It can also be escalated to other countries as it gains traction and contextual relevance.
The project will benefit youths because they will receive civic education that will increase their knowledge as a demand side in governance.
This project was conceptualized by a team of 5 youths under the age of 35 and its potential for replication or to be used by any youth to address a sectoral governance issue is high. For instance, since the game is a mobile game, people with disabilities can use the portal provided by the game to raise awareness on the issues that people with disabilities face such as to solve a policy problem regarding social inclusion of people with disabilities and gender equality.
Currently the youth population of Nigeria is estimated to be 64 million where females are 51.6% and this number has a great role to play in the 2019 elections. It is hoped that through such a game, politics, governance and government are demystified and youth will play more active role during the elections as they would have replicated such roles on the gaming platform. The game will increase youth participation in governance as gamers are given offline task to carry out in real world around issues they had identified in the game. They develop good governance principles and join debates around trending governance issues introduced via the back end by the gaming administrators.
The young people become better decision makers and invariably introduce discussion points to other online discussion group platforms like Facebook or Twitter to share opinions on issues which tend to influence other young person’s civic behaviour.
The gaming app can be replicated across other Chemonics project on democracy and governance especially for projects that face youth apathy in civic engagement. The story context will be changed to replicate the unique attributes for the different locations but the main gaming schematics remain the same.
