🌆 CitiWatch: Empowering Citizens, Inspiring Accountability

🚀 What Inspired Us

In many Nigerian communities, citizens face countless civic issues — from damaged roads and broken streetlights to poor waste management and unresponsive service agencies.
While people often report these issues, little to nothing happens afterward.
We were inspired by this gap — the lack of accountability and feedback — to build CitiWatch, a civic engagement platform that bridges the disconnect between citizens and public service authorities.

Our mission was simple:

Turn citizen complaints into visible civic action.

🧠 What We Learned

Throughout the project, we learned how powerful technology can be when combined with civic responsibility.
We gained insights into:

• The importance of transparency and real-time reporting in public governance.
  
• How to design interfaces that empower users rather than intimidate them.
  
• Working with cloud services and map APIs to display location-based complaints effectively.
  

🛠️ How We Built It

CitiWatch was developed as a .NET Web API backend with a Next.js frontend.
Here’s the tech breakdown:

• Backend: ASP.NET Web API with C#
  
• Frontend: Next.js for fast and modern UI
  
• Database: SQL Server
  
• Media Storage: Cloudinary (for uploading complaint images)
  
• Authentication: JWT-based user access control
  
• Geolocation: Google Maps API for complaint tracking
  

The system allows citizens to:

1. Report civic issues by uploading images and descriptions.
   
2. Track the progress of their complaints in real-time.
   
3. Enable government agencies to respond, resolve, and provide feedback.

⚙️ Challenges We Faced

• UI/UX Balancing: Creating a clean, intuitive interface while keeping performance optimized.
  

CitiWatch isn’t just an app — it’s a movement for civic accountability.
It represents the belief that when citizens can speak, be heard, and see action, communities thrive.

CitiWatch — Your voice. Your city. Your power.

Built With

• .net
• c#
• cloudinary
• next.js