In an effort to drive more meaningful voter engagement in Nigeria’s 2023 general election, a leading non-partisan, non-profit organisation, Yiaga Africa, partnered with a global cloud communication company, Infobip to implement an innovative WhatsApp conversational chatbot solution to better connect and educate voters across the country.
A first-of-its-kind project for Infobip in Africa, the voter education chatbot named #MyElectionBuddy was developed to provide critical election-related information to the citizens of Nigeria, in line with Yiaga Africa’s drive to increase voters’ education and citizen engagements.
The customer growth manager for Africa at Infobip Nigeria, Isaac Akanni, who led the project implementation, noted that the 2023 election is crucial for the country, and concerned organisations like Yiaga Africa have worked hard to ensure that eligible voters have all the right information they need to cast their vote at the polls.
“Even though large numbers of people usually register to vote, a relatively lower number turn out in the polls. This is because people often struggle to obtain information about how to cast their votes, where to vote, how to get or renew a voter’s card, or which polling unit they fall under,” he said.
He said voter education was therefore the biggest challenge Yiaga Africa was looking to solve, and they wanted to address it through a comprehensive WhatsApp-driven chatbot that would reach many people.
“The developed chatbot can answer an array of users’ questions and links to the official electoral websites where voters can find external information, like election results,” he said.
Akanni said after being appointed to the project, Infobip completed implementation by 1 February 2023, amidst very tight timelines.”
“With time, we will continue to improve the chatbot and its functionality. However, the user feedback has been positive since the launch, clocking thousands of active users,” he said.
According to Mark Amaza, senior communications officer at Yiaga Africa, the chatbot increased voters’ confidence in participating in the elections.
“The WhatsApp chatbot enabled us to reach thousands of voters with accurate and timely information in the 2023 Nigerian elections. This information ranged from understanding the electoral process, locating their polling locations, and knowing how to track election results,” he said.
Amaza said they especially appreciate how the Infobip team supported them with the development and launch of the project.
“Infobip ensured that we understood how the chatbot would work and built our capacity to maintain it as an important communication channel for our organisation. Importantly, they were always prompt to respond to inquiries and troubleshoot problems, providing us with 24/7 support,” he added.
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