Ushahidi, which means “testimony” in Swahili, is a website that was initially developed to map reports of violence in Kenya after the post-election fallout at the beginning of 2008. Ushahidi’s roots are in the collaboration of Kenyan citizen journalists during a time of crisis. The website was used to map incidents of violence & peace efforts throughout the country based on reports submitted via the web & mobile phone. This initial deployment of Ushahidi had 45,000 users in Kenya, & was the catalyst for us realizing there was a need for a platform based on it, which could be use by others around the world.

Since then it has grown from an ad hoc group of volunteers to a focused organization. The team is comprised of individuals with a wide span of experience ranging from human rights work to software development. They have also built a strong team of volunteer developers in primarily in Africa, but also Europe & the U.S.

Now Team Ushahidi gives back to the local dev community in Kenya where it all began by establishing the iHub, which is being billed as Nairobi’s Innovation Hub for the technology community. And it couldn’t come at a better time as the government through the ICT Board is yet to embark on its own tech facility which will be based in Athi river…though I overheard that they may be eyeing the Sameer ICT Park development along Mombasa road to Fastrack their initiative.
The iHub is an open space for the technologists, investors, tech companies and hackers in the area code 254. This space is a tech community facility with a focus on young entrepreneurs, web and mobile phone programmers and designers. It is part open community workspace (co-working), part investor and VC hub and part incubator.
There have been discussions on the need for a physical nexus for the tech community in Kenya for a couple years, so it’s great to finally be so close to uncorking the bottles and celebrating a big step forward continue reading »