This blog was first published in the July 2026 issue of the Busara Behavioral Lens. You can subscribe to the newsletter here.

A decade ago, a research team from Busara set out to better understand civic participation across East Africa. In their routine field visits with civil society organizations (CSOs), a recurring challenge emerged: despite significant efforts to mobilize citizens around issues that directly affected their lives, meaningful and sustained participation often remained limited (Too, 2024a). Further research revealed that the challenge was not a lack of citizen interest, but rather a gap between awareness and action. While many civic engagement initiatives successfully generated attention, most struggled to translate that interest into active citizen participation, such as signing up for and attending community meetings to discuss policy issues. This was an important observation, especially in the East African context, because CSOs usually tend to be intermediaries between governments and citizens, often mobilizing people to participate in public events and community meetings to discuss policy issues such as security, public healthcare, environmental management and conservation, physical planning, and economic development, among other issues. 

Another challenge was observed from Busara’s engagement with CSOs: while most did their best to generate and sustain interest among citizens in their communities, most operated without access to the evidence, technical expertise, or behavioral insights needed to understand why some approaches succeeded while others fell short (ibid). CSOs generally have limited awareness of the resources and methods available for experimentation and innovation, and perceive behavioral science as too technical, academic, or complex for their organizations (ibid). Constraints are compounded by the multiple and often competing demands CSOs must balance, including maintaining relationships with communities, collaborating with peer organizations, engaging policymakers, and meeting donor expectations. As a result, many opportunities to strengthen citizen agency and improve civic participation remain underutilized. We also observed that, despite formal mechanisms that require public participation in governance processes, citizen engagement is often limited and, in some instances, largely symbolic, with public input receiving little consideration in policymaking (Muruaru, 2025). This weakens the feedback loops between citizens and policymakers, reducing the availability of evidence that can inform responsive policymaking and ultimately undermining the principles of good governance. This gap has been discussed by Odhiambo and Taifa (2009), who argue that ineffective participation in policy formulation results in policies that do not align with people’s needs. Incorporating behavioral insights (BI) would enable governments and other policy actors to draw on useful knowledge of human behavior, enhancing policy design and decision-making (Hallsworth et al., 2018). Understanding the cognitive factors that shape behavior enables policymakers to design solutions that are both effective and accepted. Behavioral insights offer a forward-looking approach that grounds policy in evidence about how people think and act, equipping policymakers to tackle contemporary challenges with innovative, human-centered strategies. It would also help them identify their own biases and take corrective measures (ibid).

These are crucial insights when we consider that, over the past decade, Afrobarometer’s citizen feedback has documented a decline in trust in public institutions, with fewer than half of respondents across 39 African countries reporting trust in key institutions (Adaba & David, 2024). We have also observed voter apathy across the region. In Kenya’s 2022 general elections, for example, voter turnout was at its lowest in recent years (Uraia Trust, 2025). These are interesting observations, given that trust and citizen participation are key to sustaining a healthy governance system.  

We have also observed a shrinking civic space with opposition figures and civic actors harassed and arrested. In Kenya, for instance, there is a growing trend of using hired gangs of youth commonly referred to as goons to disrupt political events and protests. In Uganda, opposition figures have been arrested and charged with treason, while some media houses have been shut down. In Tanzania, the main opposition leader, Tundu Lissu,  was charged with treason (Lasteck, 2025). These developments risk undermining citizen participation by discouraging citizens from engaging in political and civic processes. Such an outcome would also deny governments and policy actors the very feedback they need to build effective policies and programs for citizens. 

Nonetheless, recent years have seen growing civic awareness and new forms of engagement in places like Kenya, including the mobilization of citizens through both online and offline platforms to influence public policy and demand accountability (Ogutu & Garcia 2024; Too 2024b). That means citizens are aware, but meaningful engagement is missing. 

Collectively, these observations led Busara to ask a fundamental question: How can behavioral science help build stronger collaboration between citizens and governments, civil society organizations, and other policy actors? How can policy actors and citizens work together to build meaningful participation, accountability, and citizen agency? Over the past decade, these questions have guided our governance work and inspired the next phase of our work: the creation of the Behavioral Science for Governance Lab (BeGov Lab). This will be a hub for applied behavioral science, embedded partnerships, and real-time learning for civil society, government, and other policy actors. The Lab is anchored in experimental research and serves as a platform for rigorous, real-time testing of civic innovations, policy sandboxes, products, campaigns, and strategies, particularly those with potential for policy and social impact or improved citizen engagement. By embedding behavioral science into policy and program implementation, the Lab enables partners to rapidly assess what works, for whom, and under what conditions before investing significant resources in scaling interventions. This iterative approach reduces implementation risk, strengthens decision-making, and ensures that policies and programs are grounded in evidence from the communities they are intended to serve. For example, through message testing, organizations can test and refine Social and Behavior Change Communication (SBCC) campaigns before launch, ensuring that messages resonate with local contexts, social norms, and the motivations of target audiences. This allows partners to design interventions that are more effective and responsive.

You might be asking, why is experimentation important for citizen engagement? To answer this question, we have to look at a few examples across the world. Globally, behavioral science is becoming mainstream in public sector innovation. International organizations such as the World Bank are applying behavioral insights in policy formulation and implementation (World Bank, 2015). The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), also advances the application of behavioral insights to inform policy design and implementation (OECD, 2022). Governments in the Global North have also, in recent decades, accelerated the integration of behavioral science to improve public programs, including their formulation and implementation. Countries such as the UK, the US, Germany, and Australia have dedicated behavioral insights teams that help these governments integrate behavioral science into government programs (Whitehead et al., 2014). More countries are adopting behavioral science to improve governance outcomes across fields, from healthcare and education to tax compliance and other public programs. Countries such as New Zealand apply behavioral insights to increase the number of people saving for retirement (O’Connell, 2009). In Guatemala, the government applies behavioral insights (using reminders) to improve tax compliance (Kettle et al., 2016). Elsewhere in Peru, the Ministry of Education launched MineduLab, an innovation laboratory designed to tackle persistent challenges within the education sector. The lab focused on improving teacher attendance and motivation, enhancing student learning outcomes, strengthening parental involvement in education, and reducing school dropout rates (Afif et al., 2019). In India, the state of Tamil Nadu entered into a memorandum of understanding with the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) to strengthen the use of evidence-based research and behavioral science in the design and implementation of state policies and programs (ibid). Similar partnerships have since become increasingly common worldwide. Governments in countries including Mexico, Indonesia, Kuwait, Kenya, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates have collaborated with organizations such as J-PAL, the Behavioral Insights Team (BIT), ideas42, the World Bank, and other behavioral science experts to integrate behavioral insights into public policy and service delivery (Afif et al., 2019). 

As one of the largest behavioral science firms in the world, Busara has also partnered with policy actors, including CSOs and governments, to advance the application of behavioral insights. We have partnered with CSOs over the last decade to advance experimentation and the application of behavioral science in civic engagement. This has led to the development of toolkits such as the Low Cost Message Testing toolkit, which helps organizations test and refine advocacy and social and behavior change messages. 

We have also partnered with government agencies to help them apply behavioral insights in governance. For instance, in 2024, we partnered with Strathmore University in Kenya to train government officials on applying behavioral science to increase the uptake of information technology (IT) in public service delivery. Beyond East Africa, Busara partnered with the government of Lesotho and GIZ under a multisectoral, multistakeholder national Integrated Catchment Management Program (‘ReNOKA’) – funded by the European Union and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development. The consortium included several ministries and government agencies alongside other community organizations. The program initiated a Social and Behavior Change Communication (SBCC) strategy to promote collective watershed restoration, integrating behavioral science and SBCC into ReNOKA’s communication and community engagement to foster participation, ownership, and sustainable land and water management. Findings showed that behaviorally informed SBCC interventions can translate awareness into sustained stewardship by aligning motivation with opportunity, empowering communities as co-creators, and strengthening the sustainability of restoration. This initiative exemplifies what Busara’s BeGov Lab aims to accomplish. Bringing together different policy actors to co-create solutions on issues communities face, grounded in local context, available resources, collaboration, and innovation. This will help advance experimentation across the region and ensure that Global Majority contexts are not left behind in policy innovation by applying behavioral insights in governance. Busara has also previously partnered with the Government of Nigeria and other partners, including the Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, Accenture, the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG), and the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), to establish an embedded behavioral science unit within Nigeria’s Policy Innovation Unit (PIU). The initiative built government capacity to apply behavioral science to the design, delivery, and evaluation of social programs, while generating evidence to inform program improvements and scaling. Busara supported stakeholders through capacity-building, intervention design, and behavioral testing, pioneering the use of behavioral science to strengthen the uptake and effectiveness of government social welfare programs under the National Social Investment Programmes (NSIP), including the Government Enterprise Empowerment Programme (GEEP) and the School Feeding Programme.

Citizen-centered policymaking

Policy decisions and public services across East Africa are increasingly informed by efforts to better understand citizens’ needs, preferences, and experiences. Governments at both national and county levels are actively seeking ways to strengthen the quality and responsiveness of policies and services. Yet, the public sector faces distinctive challenges in translating this ambition into consistently citizen-centered outcomes. Unlike private-sector organizations, governments often operate in contexts where citizens have limited choice over service providers, reducing some of the incentives to innovate and improve services. At the same time, public institutions have a mandate to serve diverse populations, making it difficult to design policies and services that respond effectively to the needs and experiences of different citizen groups. These challenges can be compounded by gaps in analytical and human-centered design capabilities, as well as incomplete or insufficient data on citizens’ behaviors, preferences, and lived experiences. As Kahneman argues in Thinking, Fast and Slow, human behavior is dynamic and shaped by cognitive, social, and contextual factors (Kahneman, 2011). In other words, human beings do not always make rational decisions. Instead, they rely on a set of factors to make decisions. The BeGov Lab seeks to work alongside governments and policymakers to address these challenges by bringing behavioral insights, rigorous experimentation, human-centered approaches, and citizen perspectives into policy and program design, ideally before interventions are scaled. By testing what works and learning from citizens’ experiences, the Lab aims to help governments and other policy actors to use resources more effectively, strengthen public services, and build policies and interventions that are more responsive to the people they serve. This approach complements, rather than replaces, existing efforts by governments, CSOs and development partners to strengthen evidence-based policymaking. It contributes to a more responsive and participatory social contract. BeGov Lab, in a sense, builds on a people-first approach, blending innovation with collaboration and integrating behavioral insights, such as social norms and cognitive biases, into the design and implementation of interventions by both government and civil society. Besides working closely with the government, the Lab aims to build stronger collaboration with civil society, helping these organizations apply behavioral insights in their programs, such as the SBCC interventions mentioned earlier. 

Overall, the Lab will help both governments and civil society build stronger bridges with citizens. These approaches will improve compliance, increase service uptake, and drive better development outcomes. By applying behavioral science to these governance issues, Busara is helping to bridge the gap between citizens’ aspirations and governance outcomes. This includes co-developing tools and approaches with civic actors to strengthen citizen agency, improve participation, and support engagement beyond election cycles.

The future of civic innovation

Building on a decade of civic engagement across East Africa, Busara’s new strategy moves from policy to practice, informed by the understanding that human behavior is dynamic and that innovations take time to be fully integrated. Interconnected and complex systems such as governance systems are reinforcing, arising from feedback loops within the system (Diaz Del Valle et al., 2024; Wright & Meadows, 2012). This is why there is a need for closer collaboration among the different policy actors to allow relationships to form, norms and rules of interaction to emerge, interactions to be reinforced, and, most importantly, to enable feedback loops. Through the Behavioral Science for Governance Lab, Busara is convening policy actors to reflect on what it takes to build citizens’ agency and identify remaining gaps in citizen engagement and in the application of behavioral insights in governance. Through the Lab, we are bringing together scholars, researchers, funders, government, and civil society leaders from across East Africa to share insights on strengthening active citizen participation and advancing experimentation with behavioral approaches to governance. The Lab will also be a hub for showcasing innovations that have used behavioral science to improve citizen engagement. As we launch and operationalize the Lab, it brings our work of applying behavioral science, collaboration, and capacity strengthening to a full-circle moment and the next phase of our work: with the BeGov Lab, designed to incubate, test, and scale behavioral innovations that strengthen civic participation and improve governance outcomes.

We invite researchers, scholars, civil society leaders, funders, government agencies, and practitioners to join us in shaping and advancing the future of active citizen participation as we build networks of collaboration between different stakeholder groups in the governance sector in East Africa. If you are interested in collaborating with the BeGov Lab, visit our website to learn more about our work and how you can partner with us.

References

1. Adaba, K. A., & David, B. (2024). Across Africa, public trust in key institutions and leaders is weakening (Afrobarometer Dispatch No. 891). Afrobarometer. https://www.afrobarometer.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/AD891-PAP20-Africans-trust-in-key-institutions-and-leaders-is-weakening-Afrobarometer-31oct24.pdf 
2. Diaz Del Valle, E., Jang, C., & Wendel, S. (2024). Behavioral systems: Combining behavioral science and systems analysis (Busara Groundwork No. 8, Research Agenda). Busara. https://doi.org/10.62372/FMJL3064 
3. Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
4. Kettle, S., Hernandez, M., Ruda, S., & Sanders, M. (2016). Behavioral interventions in tax compliance: Evidence from Guatemala (Policy Research Working Paper No. 7690). World Bank. World Bank Documents & Reports 
5. Muruaru, D. (2025, March 18). Can dialogue foster active citizen participation in Kenya? Reflecting on the People Dialogue Festival. Busara. https://busara.global/blog/can-dialogue-foster-active-citizen-participation-in-kenya-reflecting-on-the-people-dialogue-festival/ 
6. O’Connell, A. (2009). KiwiSaver: A model scheme? Social Policy Journal of New Zealand, 36, 130–141. https://www.msd.govt.nz/about-msd-and-our-work/publications-resources/journals-and-magazines/social-policy-journal/spj36/36-kiwisaver-a-model-scheme.html 
7. Ogutu, B., & Garcia, F. (2024, August 31). From a hashtag to a movement: The role of online information ecosystems in driving citizen engagement. Busara. https://busara.global/blog/from-a-hashtag-to-a-movement/ 
8. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. (2022). Good practice principles for ethical behavioural science in public policy (OECD Public Governance Policy Papers No. 20). OECD Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1787/e19a9be9-en 
9. Hallsworth, M., Egan, M., Rutter, J., & McCrae, J. (2018). Behavioural government: Using behavioural science to improve how governments make decisions. The Behavioural Insights Team. https://www.bi.team/publications/behavioural-government/ 
10. Too, G. (2024). How can citizens’ voices enhance governance? Reflections from applied behavioral science research on what motivates citizen participation in East Africa. (Busara Groundwork No. 16) [Lessons learned]. Busara. https://www.doi.org/10.62372/NBDJ8943 
11. Too, G. (2024b, July 7). Unpacking political protest: Q&A with Busara’s Gideon Too on Kenya’s #RejectFinanceBill2024. Busara https://busara.global/blog/rejectfinancebill-unpacking-political-protest-qa/ 
12. Uraia Trust. (2025). Nationwide study on voter apathy during the Kenya 2022 general election: Final report. https://uraia.or.ke/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/VOTER-APATHY-STUDY-2022-FINAL.pdf 
13. Whitehead, M., Jones, R., Howell, R., Lilley, R., & Pykett, J. (2014). Nudging all over the world: Assessing the global impact of the behavioral sciences on public policy. Economic and Social Research Council. 
14. Wright, D., & Meadows, D. H. (2012). Thinking in systems: a primer. Taylor and Francis.