Ushahidi featured in MIT’s Top 10 Start-Ups To Watch

The GIS service for tracking incidents of unrest in violence in Kenya, Ushahidi, has been featured in MIT’s Technology Review as on of the Top 10 Start-Ups to Watch…

In the chaos that followed Kenya’s disputed presidential election last December, 1,200 people were killed, and several hundred thousand more fled their homes. Skeptical of the accuracy of official reports, a group of Web developers and bloggers with Kenyan ties cobbled together a Web application that could receive citizen incident reports via text message from any mobile phone in Kenya and display them as a Google Maps application.

Cofounded by Erik Hersman, an American son of missionary parents who was raised in Kenya (he is author of the blog Whiteafrican.com and now lives in Florida), the group called the creation Ushahidi–the Swahili word for “testimony.” They have formed a nonprofit company and are finalizing funding with a large foundation to turn Ushahidi into a platform that can be deployed easily and rapidly in areas of crisis. Already, a version of Ushahidi is being used to track anti-­immigrant violence afflicting South Africa.