From November 4 to 25, the Kenyan site Ushahidi is organizing a global online survey. Does his new program, V3, meet expectations? What improvements need to be made? It’s up to users to respond. And for good reason, it is they, all over the world, who have seized this open source program, therefore in free access, and who have not stopped pushing the limits of its use ever since. As is currently the case in Burundi with this online map, launched in April in Bujumbura, the capital, and which attempts, in an extremely critical situation, to view all the violence against civilians in one digital location.

When it was created in December 2007, Ushahidi was imagined as an emergency in Nairobi so that residents of the Kenyan capital could indicate on a digital map the streets to avoid during post-election riots. A civic act achievable by simply sending an SMS.

Since then, everything has accelerated and new uses have been invented. In Nigeria, Zambia, but also in Colombia or Albania, associations or collectives have used the participative platform to try to detect electoral fraud; in Egypt and India, to denounce sexual violence against women. In Libya, Syria or Afghanistan, international agencies, such as the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Unocha), have used them for private use to coordinate their actions on the ground.

All-round digital creativity

Difficult to make an exhaustive list of these uses: Ushahidi members themselves are not able to, because the program can be downloaded, in principle, without any prior request. “It is estimated to have been used by over 60,000 projects,” said Angela Oduor Lungati, director of community engagement. An online document reports on known deployments by the Kenyan team. We discover there that, this summer, a platform was opened in Sweden to fight against homophobic discrimination, and that four sites were created almost simultaneously in Nigeria to monitor the smooth running of the presidential election.

The multiplication of these initiatives poses new questions. Is this all-round digital creativity still effective? What do these actions actually lead to? “Sometimes there is a lack of continuity in all of these approaches,” says computer scientist Rory Hodgson, who currently works with the organization Stakeholder Democracy Network (SDN) in Niger and managed two platforms in 2011 and 2015. participative in Nigeria using the Ushahidi program. This questioning and the ways in which these actions could have more impact were at the center of the second Buntwani conference, which took place on August 25 and 26 in Johannesburg.

“Collaborative societal actions”

In a proactive approach, Ushahidi launched a new project, 100 Resilient Cities, funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, which is directed by Shadrock Roberts, in the United States. “It is a question of favoring projects where collective citizens, often put aside, become involved in the governance of a city. However, there is no angelism in this former USAID (US agency for international development), “online mapping is a door to new communication. Some communities display political demands and use the map to acquire inaccessible data in order to advance a cause. But these collaborative societal actions are difficult to implement, and in particular to maintain over time. “

Le Monde wanted to know more about these projects, unexpected children of Ushahidi. Who are they ? What new questions arise about the place and role of civil society? Electoral monitoring, defense of women’s rights, aid to migrants, but also civic participation to improve life in the city… Around the world of these multifaceted uses of the Kenyan program in ten examples, ten actions on four continents.
Learn more at http://www.lemonde.fr/afrique/article/2015/11/10/ushahidi-une-technologie-africaine-qui-a-conquis-la-planete_4806913_3212.html#kG6iq3I3c33mXU0r.99

About The Author

CEO AfrikaTech

Comme beaucoup de personnes j’ai connu l’Afrique à travers des stéréotypes : l’Afrique est pauvre, il y a la guerre, famine… Je suis devenu entrepreneur pour briser ces clichés et participer à la construction du continent. J’ai lancé plusieurs entreprises dont Kareea (Formation et développement web), Tutorys (Plate-forme de e-learning), AfrikanFunding (Plate-forme de crowdfunding). Après un échec sur ma startup Tutorys, à cause d’une mauvaise exécution Business, un manque de réseau, pas de mentor, je suis parti 6 mois en immersion dans l’écosystème Tech au Sénégal. J’ai rencontré de nombreux entrepreneurs passionnés, talentueux et déterminés. A mon retour sur Paris je décide de raconter leur histoire en créant le média AfrikaTech. L'objectif est de soutenir les entrepreneurs qui se battent quotidiennement en Afrique en leur offrant la visibilité, les connaissances, le réseautage et les capitaux nécessaires pour réussir. L'Afrique de demain se construit aujourd'hui ensemble. Rejoignez-nous ! LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/boubacardiallo

Related Posts

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.