Give Nigerian Communities the Tools to Monitor Their Own Infrastructure

Rural and peri-urban communities in Nigeria have experienced repeated infrastructure failure followed by years of non-response from government maintenance agencies. A borehole that breaks in January may not be repaired until the following year — if at all. School roofs collapse in October and are patched with whatever materials are available. The fundamental problem is that maintenance requests disappear into government systems with no accountability. Your challenge is to design a community infrastructure monitoring and accountability system that enables any Nigerian community to log, track, and publicly report the condition of public infrastructure in their area. It must work via WhatsApp and SMS, support Hausa, Yoruba, Igbo, and Pidgin, create public accountability through a transparent status dashboard, and escalate to elected representatives when response timelines are exceeded. Submit a system design document (max 10 pages) including: how communities log and document issues, how government agencies receive and respond to reports, the public accountability dashboard, the elected representative escalation mechanism, how the system handles false reports, and a plan to onboard 500 communities across five states. Judging criteria: 35% accountability mechanism design, 30% community usability in multiple languages, 20% government integration, 15% false report handling.