The Ushahidi Experience and Social Media

By Mohamed Osman and Yonis Ali

                           

Social media has become  a new way  of creating platforms which are being used to address the most pressing issues that are affecting any community at a particular time. 


After visiting the iHub center in Nairobi where a group of Grehaya team and I met, Erik Hersman, the founder of the http://ushahidi.com/ website focusing on crowd sourcing , I realized the power of social media and how it can be used for the good of the societies.


Using  social media  can enhance the free flow of information like we have seen in the Arab spring as people were tweeting and posting what is going on in certain areas.

This really took to a new level the creation and exchange of user-generated content, but there is a doubt about the extent to which social media will enable us to facilitate any kind of change in countries where media and mobile technology is not as efficient as it has proved to be in Kenya.


Since Ushahidi is open-source, anyone can improve the service in anyway they see fit in their respective areas. Anybody can contribute information. Whether itʼs a simple text message from a SMS-capable phone, a photo or video from a smartphone, or a report submitted online


Ushahidi can gather information from any device with a digital data connection.With Ushahidi, itʼs easier than ever to get critical and timely information to those that need it most, on a platform that almost everybody can use.


Ushahidi was initially used  in the aftermath of Kenya's disputed 2007 presidential election  that collected eyewitness reports of violence sent in by email and text-message and placed them on a Google Map,


Soon after its initial use in Kenya, the Ushahidi software was used to create a similar site to track anti-immigrant violence in South Africa, UnitedforAfrica.co.sa in May 2008. The software has since been used to map violence in eastern Congo, beginning in November 2008.


Ushahidi is used in Kenya, Malawi, Uganda, and Zambia in June 2009 to track pharmacy stock-outs in several East African countries. Finally, it was used to monitor elections in Mexico and India, among other projects. It was also used by Aljazeera to collect eyewitness reports during the 2008-2009 Gaza War.

GREHAYA talking to Ushahidi co-founder Erik Hersman at iHub, Nairobi.