[kictanet] Kenyan takes on Silicon Valley]

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Kenyan takes on Silicon Valley
By MACHARIA GAITHO
Posted Sunday, March 21 2010 at 21:21

I am a tree hugger at heart, is the response one gets on asking Ory 
Okolloh about Ushahidi.com's commercial prospects. She does see 
commercial potential for the new media sensation that has probably given 
her more coverage in the mainstream global media in recent months than 
the combined space given to President Kibaki, Prime Minister Raila 
Odinga, Nobel Laureate Wangari Maathai, Safaricom boss Michael Joseph 
and Inter Milan footballer McDonald Mariga.

Yet, if the global buzz Ushahidi is generating is any guide, we could be 
looking at a Kenyan Google, Microsoft or Facebook in terms of business 
potential. Ushahidi is a non-profit venture kept afloat by grants from 
various foundations, but Ms Okolloh is confident that in a few years, it 
will be able to sustain itself.

It was built without venture capital, and even the technology developed 
to run it was deliberately kept open source, ruling out patents and 
proprietorship. And though she does have two young mouths to feed, she 
is reluctant to even talk about the prospect of super profits.

Big business is starting to express interest in Ushahidi, but she 
remains cautious of commercial tie-ups that may cramp her style. That's 
the tree hugger in her. Her business card bears no title. It identifies 
her workplace as Ushahidi — crowdsourcing and crisis information. 
Against her name is just an e-mail address.

Across the world, however, she is earning recognition as co-founder and 
principal force behind Ushahidi, an online blogger-generated mapping 
tool that came into its own with the Haiti and Chile earthquakes and US 
blizzards. "Africa's Gift to Silicon Valley: How to Track a Crisis" was 
the title of a major feature on Ms Okolloh and Ushahidi in a New York 
Times article published less than a week before the Pan African Media 
Conference opened in Nairobi. "Ushahidi technology saves lives in Haiti 
and Chile", trumpeted the Newsweek interactive site on March 3.

The publicity Ushahidi has generated has also served to put Kenya on the 
global digital map. And, ironically, if the site is Kenya's gift to 
Silicon Valley and the world, it is also a gift from Kenya's murderous 
round of post-election violence. Ms Okolloh, who is based in South 
Africa, had come home to vote and report on the polls when the violence 
broke out.

Desperate for information and seeking ways to help, she sent out a 
plaintive cry on her blog: "Any techies out there willing to do a mash 
up of where the violence and destruction is using Google Maps?" The 
response was instantaneous. Within days, volunteer programmers had 
written a software code that allowed anyone to send in information via 
SMS, blog posts, video, phone calls and photographs.

The information and its exact source was uploaded onto a map, providing 
a picture of serious hotspots based on the density of data coming from 
each location. The Kenyan poll violence was a test-run, and come the 
Haiti quake, Ushahidi became a global sensation. It was the first time 
such simple technology had been used on this scale and Ushahidi became 
the default data base for the Red Cross, US army and international 
relief effort.

Then came Chile, the blizzards that paralysed much of the US, violence 
in Palestine and India, trouble in Afghanistan 
 the list keeps growing. 
"Think about that", asked The New York Times on the blizzards. "The 
capital of the sole superpower is deluged with snow, and to whom does 
its local newspaper turn to help dig it out? Kenya."

When I first met Ms Okolloh at the annual Highway Africa conference in 
South Africa a few years ago, she was part of the crowd of young 
bloggers with a social conscience trying to get a foot in the door. How 
does it feel now that she sits at the high table? "It feels good," she 
says with a laugh, "It's been a long journey."

The lesson she learned is that if you stick around long enough and never 
tire, people will start to pay attention. Ushahidi's success is great 
vindication of her faith that technology would explode in Africa as, in 
the early days, many sneered at bloggers who imagined creating something 
worthwhile and sustainable.

Internet penetration in Africa was nothing to write home about. Now, 
thanks partly to the mobile phone revolution, old wisdom has been turned 
upside down. Market researchers are noting the demographic shift, and it 
is obvious that anyone wanting to reach the under-25s, half the 
population, must look to new media.

Moderating a roundtable discussion on new media at the Pan African Media 
Conference, Ms Okolloh wondered why talk of the concept in Africa too 
often focuses on the social and economic benefits — paying bills or 
sending money through M-Pesa; farmers accessing information on weather 
and fertilisers through SMS.

She thinks the so-called "development" benefit of new media is a 
by-product; the primary function being fun and ease of communication. 
But hasn't Ushahidi itself been a major catalyst for good? Yes, she 
concurs, but that was dependant on the "fun" technology being available 
in the first place.

She points to the mobile phone revolution on the continent. If mobile 
phones were sold as "development" rather than affordable and convenient 
means of communication, she ventures, they might not have taken off so 
fast. She also refers to the push towards digital villages in Africa.

Quite often, policy makers and implementers report failure because the 
customers they expected — farmers seeking information on credit or farm 
inputs or mothers seeking help for a sick child — were not forthcoming. 
Instead users might be youth "wasting time" on Facebook or downloading 
music. That, to her should be the measure of success. A nice and simple 
lesson, that, for Information and Communications Permanent Secretary 
Bitange Ndemo.

Ms Ory Okolloh graduated from Harvard Law School in 2005 and is now a 
co-founder and executive director of http://Ushahidi.com. 
<http://Ushahidi.com.> Her self-penned online profile in Global Voices 
describes a social activist blogger, aka Kenyan Pundit, with a wide 
range of interests.

Source: Daily Nation, Kenya

The internet is the real unifier of the globe. Your country, sex, 
religion doesn't have to matter. Its what you are not where you are that 
will define the next crop of influential peoples of the world

Submitted by popq
Posted March 22, 2010 09:25 AM





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