Aligned to the African Union Agenda 2063 and UN SDGs, the African Risk Compass aims to enhance risk-based participatory governance. The initiative has 3 main goals:
The African Risk Compass is the first initiative of its kind to crowdsource public perceptions on emerging sociopolitical risks and potential preventative solutions from all 54 African countries. Through a hybrid approach, the Compass collects quantitative and qualitative data using surveys, consultations, a public awareness campaign and a hub for research to amplify the voices and concerns of multiple actor groups, including the general population, universities, sector experts, businesses, NGOs, community leaders, media, military sector and public authority representatives. The people-centred data and insights are made publicly available to foster inclusive, accountable and transparent decision-making processes.
The African Risk Compass provides new primary datasets on sociopolitical risk drivers and public perception which can feed into existing preventative mechanisms and frameworks to turn early warnings into early actions. By bringing together cross-sectorial expertise from across the continent, the Compass enables interregional knowledge and best practice sharing for risk-informed development.
The African Risk Compass aims to consolidate avenues of collaboration for the general population and the African Diasporas to participate in decision-making processes. We facilitate surveys, consultations, workshops and roundtables to engage various stakeholders, including digitally excluded and often marginalised communities across the continent. Through our risk awareness campaign, we help communities understand their role in crisis management and identify false information on crisis dynamics. One of the platform's key focus is addressing the research and development gaps by engaging youth and women in risk management, enhancing inter-generational dialogue and promoting non-biased narratives regarding risk-informed development.
For the first edition of the Compass, we welcome African residents, citizens and members of African Diasporas over the age of 18 to take part. Only one survey can be completed per person.
Our partners play a key role in the development and success of the African Risk Compass. Please contact us to know more about partnership opportunities here:
The initiative is led by Axle International, an award-winning risk and innovation firm developing crowdsourced data solutions to understand emerging challenges across the African continent. Axle was awarded the 2020 top innovation for democracy and governance by the African Union’s African Governance Architecture (AGA) – African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA), and received capacity development and grant funding as part of the joint project by AGA-APSA and COMESA through the Training for Peace Africa Programme with ACCORD and ISS Africa to develop the African Risk Compass.
The Compass adopts a hybrid approach to collect quantitative and qualitative data using surveys, in-person and online consultations, a public awareness campaign and a hub for research. We work with partners across the African continent to help facilitate consultations with digitally-excluded community members.
Yes, the African Risk Compass is a not-for-profit initiative.
Yes, the data collected is completely anonymous and non-identifiable. Consultations and workshops are conducted under the Chatham House rules.
The Compass is targeting at least 1,200 surveys per country to have a ~3% margin of error at ~95% level of confidence.
There are many ways to get involved in the African Risk Compass:
Take the survey and share it with your networks
Help conduct consultations online and offline
Contribute insights to the Observatory
Subscribe for updates
Follow us on social media
Visit our carreers page to explore current opportunities to work with us
Contact us to explore partnership opportunities at
hello@africanriskcompass.org
