Foreign Policy Blogs

Friday Spotlight: Ushahidi

ushahidi

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 and peace efforts throughout the country based on reports submitted via the web and mobile phone. This initial deployment of Ushahidi had 45,000 users in Kenya, and 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.

Ushahidi is an extremely useful tool, and a great website to spend some time looking around. I highly recommend taking a look at the following maps they’ve developed (especially if you happen to be a map person, in which case you’ll be thrilled regardless)

1) Sudan Vote Monitor

2) Haiti Crisis Map

3) Tracking the H1N1 swine flu virus

 

Author

Keena Seyfarth

Keena Seyfarth is a graduate student at Johns Hopkins University, getting a combination Masters degree in International Health and Humanitarian Assistance at the Bloomberg School of Public Health and International Development and International Economics at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, D.C. She has lived much of her life in rural Africa, and traveled extensively through southern and eastern Africa. She recently returned from six months in Ethiopia, where she worked for the public hospital system.