AudiencScapes

The Nairobi-based Ushahidi has played a role in almost every major disaster to hit the globe this year. With a commitment to free and open source software, the developers hope to constantly improve the crowdsourcing platform and use it wherever it is needed. Here, Dinfin Mulupi talks to one of the founders.

By Dinfin Mulupi

“Any techies out there willing to do a mash-up of where the violence and destruction is using Google Maps?” read a post on the blog of Kenyan Lawyer, Ory Okolloh. The date was January 3, 2008, barely a week after the outbreak of post-election violence that led to the death of 1,300 people and displacement of more than 300,000 people.

The government had just banned live broadcasts and media outlets struggled to report the ongoing violence throughout the country. Okolloh, an avid blogger and a Kenyan living in South Africa, needed information, but she also wanted to be able to track the violence as it happened. Her desperate appeal gave birth to the now famous Ushahidi (which means “testimony” in Swahili).

Three other Kenyan bloggers and techies – Erik Hersman, Juliana Rotich and David Kobia – responded to Okolloh’s request and developed a portal in only three days. The portal allowed the public to send information through SMS-text messages and the Web. It also allowed them to post video and audio recordings. The data was then uploaded to a map, tracking every reported incident by location.

Hersman, Ushahidi’s co-founder and Director of Operations and Strategy, says that about 45,000 people used the Ushahidi platform during the crisis. Ushahidi draws on the concepts of citizen journalism and crowdsourcing. Though it was not as effective then as it has become, he says the early stages of Ushahidi showed the world that at a time of crisis, governments and aid organizations cannot ignore the voice of the people.

From Kenya to Haiti and Beyond

Since 2008, the Ushahidi platform has been used to monitor elections in other countries and handle humanitarian crises, like the Haiti earthquake.

“After the post-election violence in Kenya, we were able to examine ways of improving the platform from the lessons learnt during the violence. Hence by the time we had the Haiti earthquake, we had rebuilt the platform and it was much more powerful,” says Hersman.

In Haiti, Ushahidi responded two hours after the earthquake hit. The organization received thousands of messages everyday -- from people asking for water, food supplies and medication -- and mapped the exact location of every eyewitness report. By facilitating real-time information, tracking trapped and stricken survivors and translating SMS from Creole to English, Ushahidi made it easier for the relief organizations to respond to the “cries for help.” [Read more about Ushahidi’s role in the Haiti relief response: The Role of Media in Humanitarian Crises: Potential Lessons from Haiti.

Back in Kenya, Ushahidi joined the effort to prevent and respond to any violence that occurred during the August constitutional referendum. It developed a customized version of the platform, dubbed Uchaguzi (“elections” in Swahili). Incidents of electoral offenses, violence and peace initiatives were tracked and recorded. As a result, Kenya’s election commission was given information about reports of violence received and exact locations so that it could mobilize a response. In the end, the vote was characterized by relative calm.

Around the world, Ushahidi has been deployed to monitor the April presidential elections in Sudan, track the BP oil spill, document the violence in Gaza, and most recently map the Pakistani floods. Hersman believes that the biggest success for Ushahidi so far has been the handling of the Russian fires.

Hersman explains that what Ushahidi has done is combat inefficiencies that were part of the old system of managing crisis. Initially during a crisis, he says, experts would be sent to the field to analyze the impact and possible needs of the people on the ground.

“However with Ushahidi, relief organizations now rely on information collected and are able to deliver help in the exact locations where needed and on time,” says Hersman. “We have been able to overcome past inefficiencies. I believe through Ushahidi some lives have been saved during disasters.”

An Evolving Platform Based on Openness

During its initial days, Ushahidi faced challenges. Governments and nongovernmental organizations refused to share information with it. The NGOs feared they would lose funding, while governments feared losing control.

“That is why we built an open system that allows anyone to pass information,” says Hersman. The future for Ushahidi, he says, is to make the best free open-source tool for countries to respond to disaster.

Earlier this month, Ushahidi announced a new partnership that will engage university students around the world in the development and application of its platform. Following the remarkable contribution of student volunteers mapping the crises in Haiti and Chile, Ushahidi partnered with the United States Institute for Peace to launch the Universities for Ushahidi program (U4U). The U4U program will bring selected students from developing countries to learn how they can use the Ushahidi platform in their countries.

Ushahidi’s rise to prominence comes as Nairobi is becoming a hub of entrepreneurship in information and communication technology. According to Hersman, “Ushahidi has made the world realize that Africans can create world-class software, and that software comes with a different understanding, a different context, of how to use technology to create change.”

Dinfin Mulupi is a business journalist based in Nairobi, Kenya. She can be reached at ejakaitdinfin@yahoo.com