About Busayo
Busayo O. Morakinyo is a civic technology strategist, social accountability leader, and community builder whose work over the past decade has fundamentally shaped how citizens in Africa and now the United Kingdom engage with governance, public institutions, and civic innovation.
His career spans two interconnected phases, each building on the last. In Phase One (2015 to 2022), he built Africa's most influential citizen-led social accountability movement, growing a grassroots data-driven platform that tracked over $20 million in government procurement across Nigeria and 12 other African countries. In Phase Two (2023 to present), he has been translating two decades of movement-building experience into new institutional infrastructure in the United Kingdom, founding both Creative Ideation Hub (CiH) and CivaLabs CIC.
Across both phases, his work has combined three strategic competencies: civic technology product development, grassroots movement building, and the design of institutions that give communities lasting agency over decisions that affect their lives.
Busayo's professional journey began in Nigeria's civil society sector, where he engaged with programmes focused on transparency, citizen participation, and grassroots advocacy. Working at the intersection of development practice and community mobilisation, he built foundational competencies in governance research, programme implementation, and civic campaign design.
This period exposed him directly to the structural failure that would define his career mission: a profound disconnect between government spending decisions and the communities those decisions were meant to serve. Citizens lacked the tools, the data, and the civic confidence to question how public money was being spent in their own neighbourhoods. That insight became the intellectual foundation for everything that followed.
Career Timeline
Co-Founder and Director, CivaLabs CIC
Building on the foundations of Creative Ideation Hub, Busayo founded CivaLabs, a Community Interest Company based in Salford, Manchester, focused specifically on empowering underrepresented minority innovators, entrepreneurs, and creatives to create, grow, and succeed in the UK.
- —Community Interest Company based in Salford, Greater Manchester
- —Co-working and co-creation space in Manchester
- —Launchpad incubation programme for minority entrepreneurs
- —Fusion X flagship community event launched
Founder, Creative Ideation Hub (CiH)
After relocating to the United Kingdom, Busayo founded Creative Ideation Hub, a social enterprise designed to build the institutional infrastructure for youth-led civic change in the UK and internationally. CiH operates through a systems-change model with four reinforcing logic chains and its flagship CitizensNgage programme transforms civic awareness into community-level action.
- —Social Enterprise registered in the United Kingdom
- —CitizensNgage flagship civic activation programme launched
- —Civic Solutions Lab, CiH Academy, Civic Innovation Fund, Research and Advisory pillars
- —Target: scaling CitizensNgage across 15+ UK local councils
Director, Connected Development (CODE)
Busayo joined Connected Development and rose quickly to Director level, spending six transformative years scaling FollowTheMoney into the fastest-growing social accountability movement in Africa. CODE raised and managed a multidisciplinary team of 40+ professionals, raised and managed over $5M in grants, and oversaw 300+ accountability campaigns across Nigeria and 12 African countries.
- —Team of 40+ professionals in Nigeria and 10+ across Africa
- —300+ social accountability campaigns led
- —$20M+ in government procurement monitored
- —10,000+ platform users across all 36 Nigerian states
- —Platform grew 800% within two years
- —COVID-19 vaccine transparency monitoring, all 36 states
Civic Engagement and Governance Advocacy
Busayo's professional journey began in Nigeria's civil society sector, engaging with programmes focused on transparency, citizen participation, and grassroots advocacy. Working at the intersection of development practice and community mobilisation, he built foundational competencies in governance research, programme implementation, and civic campaign design. This period exposed him to the structural disconnect between government spending decisions and the communities those decisions were meant to serve.
- —Governance research and programme implementation
- —Civic campaign design and community mobilisation
- —Foundation of the accountability mission that defined his career
Thought Leadership
Open Data Summit Africa
Nairobi · 2019
TEDxIkeja
Lagos · 2021
Shoko Festival
Harare, Zimbabwe · 2019
TEDxAdankolo
Kogi State · 2019
Leadership Philosophy
Community-Centred
Sustainable change happens when communities have the tools, resources, and voice to shape the systems affecting their lives. Communities are co-creators, not beneficiaries.
Technology as Enabler
Digital tools amplify civic action but are not solutions in themselves. The most powerful systems combine technology with human capacity, trust, and institutional relationships.
Power-Sharing
Marginalised groups should hold genuine decision-making power in the work that aims to serve them, not simply consultation rights.
Systems Thinking
Effective change requires addressing root causes simultaneously across individual capacity, institutional practice, cultural norms, and infrastructure.
Evidence-Based Learning
Rigorous documentation of what works, including failures, strengthens both practice and the wider field of civic innovation.
Open Collaboration
Democracy thrives through partnership. Civic actors are collaborators, not competitors.