CIVIS Open Lab Project Creates a Model for Digital Equity across Europe and Africa

Young people, migrant families and women at risk of exclusion from Africa co-constructed multilingual and accessible digital solutions tailored to their real needs. Within a CIVIS Open Lab, students, academics and civic organisations from Europe and Africa have successfully joined forces to reduce digital and linguistic inequalities. Beyond the immediate outcomes, the project has also produced a replicable model for civic digital co-creation, ensuring that its impact can extend to new communities and future CIVIS initiatives across the Europe–Africa region.

The Open Lab project “Co-Creation for Digital Equity: Civic Technologies and Multilingual Communication in Service-Learning Projects Across Europe and Africa” addressed a tangible challenge: the digital and linguistic inequalities faced by associations and NGOs in Sfax (Tunisia) and Casablanca (Morocco). Through a full Service-Learning cycle (diagnosis, co-creation, implementation, reflection, evaluation and dissemination), university and civil society worked side by side to bridge those gaps.

The impact, measured in people as much as in tools, targetted young people, migrant families and women in vulnerable situations who gained access to improved digital services and information. Working “with” and not “for” partners, participants co-designed multilingual websites and applications (in French, Arabic, English and Spanish) built to real needs, compliant with WCAG 2.1 accessibility standards, and accompanied by user guides and training materials for each organisation.

A replicable model of digital civic co-creation

But the individual platforms are not the only outcome of the project, coordinated by Universidad Autónoma de Madrid within the framework of the Euro-African CIVIS Languages, Communication, Translation & Technologies Laboratory (LaCoTT). It has also produced a replicable model of digital civic co-creation - a “Replication Kit” bringing together a methodological framework, content templates, accessibility checklists, university–association protocols and impact indicators, designed to be transferred to other CIVIS Open Labs and to new communities in future editions. In this way, a five-month project becomes a lasting, shareable contribution to digital equity and digital democracy across the Europe–Africa space.

The story of LaCoTT itself illustrates the true potential of CIVIS: its capacity to connect people, institutions and knowledge around shared goals.

It was out of that encounter that the LaCoTT laboratory was later created, as a direct outcome of the connections CIVIS made possible.

From this foundation, the group went on to design a MOOC and a micro-credential within the CIVIS framework, with the OpenLab project now representing the culmination of that trajectory - a clear demonstration of how CIVIS’s investment in faculty development generates long-term impact.

CIVIS training turned into cooperation, innovation and impact

The initiative, developed under the CIVIS Open Labs – Rolling Call 2024 (Stream 1: Civic Engagement and Challenge-Based Education) and spanning the CIVIS hubs “Society, Culture, Heritage” and “Digital & Technological Transformations”, involved 8 to 10 civic organisations, between 50 and 80 undergraduate and postgraduate students, and 15 to 20 teaching and technical staff. A dedicated common platform was created to bring them together and make their work more visible in a shared digital space. The website helps strengthen the online presence of the organisations involved in the project, and supports wider access to multilingual information and community engagement.

The working sessions held in Madrid in June 2026 marked a key moment in the final phase of the project. The meetings brought together partners from University of Bucharest, the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, the Université Libre de Bruxelles, Aix-Marseille Université, the Université de Sfax, the Université Hassan II de Casablanca and the Université Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar. They reviewed the results, shared learnings, reinforced the collaborative methodology and explored new avenues for continuity, demonstrating the strength of a network built on the values that define CIVIS: cooperation, openness, diversity and a commitment to a fairer society.

With the completion of this OpenLab project, LaCoTT reaffirms the spirit of the CIVIS alliance and the role of European and African universities as agents of social transformation. The experience showed how training driven by CIVIS can turn into sustained cooperation, pedagogical innovation and projects with real social impact.