nellybutera/civic-bridge

Civic Bridge Africa \u2014 governance-literacy platform for African youth (Next.js frontend) # Civic Bridge Africa A governance-literacy platform for African youth (ages 16–35): plain-language explainers on parliamentary process and civic rights, comprehension quizzes, a moderated discussion forum, and a live regional-integration tracker (AU, EAC initiatives). Built for the Software Development Cycle final summative. ## Live demo - **Deployed app:** civic-bridge-steel.vercel.a… - **Backend API (Swagger UI):** civic-bridge-api.onrender.c… (repo) — the bare root URL returns a 500 by design (no landing route), so Swagger is the link to use to see the API live - **Demo video:** ADD_YOUR_VIDEO_LINK_HERE - **SRS document:** docs.google.com (v1.1 — includes a delivery-status appendix reconciling the pilot against the original spec) ### A note on first-load speed The backend runs on Render's free tier, which sleeps after ~15 minutes with no traffic. A GitHub Actions cron in the API repo pings it every 10 minutes to keep it warm, but if you're the first visitor after a long gap, the very first request (usually logging in) can take up to ~2 minutes while the server wakes up — the page will show a "waking up the server" message rather than appearing frozen. Every request after that is fast. ## Demo accounts The API seeds three accounts on startup so every role can be tested without signing up: | Role | Email | Password | |---|---|---| | Admin | admin@civicbridge.africa | admin123 | | Moderator | moderator@civicbridge.africa | mod123 | | Youth User | youth@civicbridge.africa | youth123 | You can also browse as a guest from the home page without logging in, or use the Sign Up page to create a new Youth User account. ## Tech stack - **Frontend:** Next.js 16 (App Router), React 19, Tailwind CSS v4 - **Backend:** Spring Boot 4 + PostgreSQL, JWT auth, deployed separately — see civic-bridge-api - **Deployment:** Vercel (frontend), Render (backend) This f …