Following the “post-election violence” in Kenya earlier this year, some activists from the Kenyan Blogosphere founded a simple mashup site called Ushahidi (Kiswahili for “testimony” or “evidence”) which listed reports on violent incidents all over the country (“citizen generated crisis information”). The software powering Ushahidi was later on also used for UnitedForAfrica.co.za, a website covering the xenophobic violence in Southern Africa.

Ushahidi 2.0 – tunaweza pamoja!

After scoring the first place at the Netsquared Challenge in May 2008, the team behind Ushahidi received the sum of US-$ 25,000 which enabled them to further develope the Ushahidi platform, thus creating Ushahidi 2.0:

Ushahidi plans to make the Ushahidi mapping tool available globally for free. After initial testing with NGO’s the tool will be distributed to interested parties and organizations, and the Ushahidi team will provide technical customizations and support as needed. (…) Organizations can also use the tool for internal monitoring purposes.

Talking about global mapping tools, I’ve recently sold the domain sanimap.net to the Japan Water Forum (JWF) who created a free & open mapping solution that lists sustainable water & sanitation projects world-wide. The initial idea behind sanimap.net was to use the Ushahidi engine if JWF doesn’t manage to deliver in time. Fortunately, their mapping solution (based on Google maps) worked out and organisations active in the field of water & sanitation are encouraged to contribute information on related projects.

Since we do not want to reinvent the wheel all the time,  wouldn’t it be nice to have a combined mapping solution for all (sector) projects run by the gtz? An interactive (Web 2.0, if you like) solution which may then just be filled up with data and implemented on the gtz website. Does that make sense and would it be supported by gtz policies?