From civic challenges to citizen solutions.
Don’t just point at problems. Help build the solutions.
CitizenUp is an Arabic-first civic-innovation ecosystem that brings citizens, students, developers, NGOs, and public institutions together around one goal: turning a named public problem into a working, technology-enabled fix, not just a complaint about it.
How CitizenUp works
CitizenUp runs on a five-step process:
- Identify a real public challenge
- Convene the people who can actually address it
- Co-create a solution together, across sectors
- Build and test a working implementation
- Scale what works
What does “help build the solutions” mean in practice?
It means CitizenUp treats institutions as partners to work with, not targets to criticize, on the premise that public challenges are too complex for any one institution to solve alone. Students and professionals who take part come away with real, hands-on project experience, not just a talking point.
Who is CitizenUp for?
- Citizens who want to move from naming a problem to helping fix it
- Students and early-career professionals seeking real-world project experience
- Developers, designers, and researchers who build the working implementation
- NGOs and civic groups looking to scale their impact with technology
- Public-sector innovators and institutions open to collaborating directly with citizens
Part of the Impactedia media network
CitizenUp is one of Impactedia’s media brands, part of a network built to inform, educate, empower, and mobilize the impact ecosystem across MENA and Africa. Impactedia itself works as impact credibility infrastructure, turning impact data into stories that reach the funders, partners, and communities who act on them.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need a technical background to join CitizenUp? No. The five-step process needs citizens who can name a real problem just as much as it needs developers who can build the fix, alongside NGOs and institutions who help it scale.
Does CitizenUp work against public institutions? No. Institutions are treated as partners in the process, not as targets. The starting premise is that public challenges are too complex for any one institution to solve alone.
Is CitizenUp connected to a larger company? Yes. It’s one of the media brands inside Impactedia’s network, not a standalone outlet.
Is CitizenUp only in Arabic? No. CitizenUp publishes in both Arabic and English, with Arabic as the platform’s primary language. The brand name itself, CitizenUp, stays the same in every language by design.
Page last reviewed: September 2026.