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 »

All Amber (www.allamber.co.uk), a UK based conference company is leading an initiative focusing on the development of the Mobile Web in Africa by organizing a series of conferences on the topic.  The conferences seek to bring together all of the leading stakeholders in the mobile ecosystem to learn, network and share experiences with the aim that the potential of the mobile internet and mobile applications can be truly harnessed.

All Amber events  are innovative and progressive in their nature and utilize the very best venues, with finely tuned agendas and an interactive round-table format which sets them apart from the traditional rows of seats style and contributes to all the attendees enjoying a fantastic ‘on-the-day’ experience and significantly improved outputs and networking.

All Amber’s latest event is Mobile Web East Africa (www.mobileeastafrica.com) which is taking place in Nairobi, Kenya on 3rd & 4th February 2010, is generating a large amount of interest in the region, has already attracted a host of the leading individuals and organizations from around the continent to participate and is being officially hosted by the Kenya ICT Board