Project description
Erik Hersman, Juliana Rotich, Ory Okolloh and David Kobia founded the Ushahidi IT startup in Nairobi in 2008, which will develop the interactive mapping platform, Ushahidi which means "testify" in Swahili. In the face of waves of violence in Kenya following the presidential election in December 2007, the quartet urgently imagines a tool that would allow people in the Kenyan capital to indicate on a digital map the streets to avoid during the riots post-election, by sending a simple SMS. More than 50 000 testimonies will then be collected and reported on the Ushahidi map. Soon, the project seduced American philanthropic foundations and eight months after creating this map of violence in Kenya, Ushahidi receives a grant of 200 000 dollars (139 600 euros) that will allow the four Kenyans to develop this first software and expand the application of their platform for other purposes: electoral monitoring, defense of women's rights, assistance to migrants but also citizen participation to improve life in the city... Since its creation, Ushahidi has been used more than 100 000 times in 160 different countries and more than 13 000 cards have been deployed by Internet users, NGOs or the media. It is in situations of political crisis mapping and humanitarian catastrophe that Ushahidi notably finds its full usefulness. Earthquake in Haiti or Pakistan, violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo, elections in Burundi, earthquake and tsunami in Japan, revolution in Egypt ...
Tags: Big data, Crowdmapping, Crowdsourcing, Geographical Information System, Security
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Project summary
- Organization Ushahidi
- Location Kenya
- Creation date 09/05/2019
- Project category Smart CitySmart-societal
