Online Social Innovation Takes Off in Kenya

by Nathaniel Whittemore · 2010-01-26 09:18:00 UTC
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It's always amazing to me to watch communities start. A few people linked by a common passion and geographic space, coupled with a hunger to build, can launch amazing things. That's why I'm so excited to see the emerging Kenyan social and web technology scene get its very own innovation space at the forthcoming iHub.

I've been keeping track of the East African web scene since early 2008, when we started playing with the idea of using web technology combined with community organizing principles to better map resources throughout Ugandan civil society. One of the first stops on that journey was NetSquared, where I met the folks at Ushahidi, an incredible team of multinational developers with (at that time) a common connection to Kenya.

Since building a prototype to record the violence following Kenya's disputed 2008 presidential elections, Ushahidi has become an increasingly robust tool. Their rapid deployment in the wake of the earthquake in Haiti has demonstrated the power of the platform to help communities respond to disaster.

It's also a demonstration, most fundamentally, of community power. The Haiti deployment has been managed from all over the world, including from Nairobi, where Ushahidi co-founder Erik Hersman recently relocated. And while Ushahidi's team now spans the globe, its heart and soul remain in Kenya.

According to a new blog post announcing the iHub, Ushahidi will help manage and fund the center as it gets up and running, as a way to give back to the local developer community that's contributed so much to the project.

While the space will start off as a working and assembly hub, they also aspire to bring some venture funding resources to the table in a manner similar to that of Appfrica Labs, a Kampala-based incubator started by American software engineer (and new formal Ushahidi team member) Jon Gosier.

This is seriously exciting stuff. If development has too often been the story of outsiders trying to solve problems on behalf of people on the ground, the web is a space where local entrepreneurs can cut through that dynamic and directly build what the community wants and needs.

Check out the video of the in-progress space, and read more if you want to get involved:

iHub First Look - Nairobi's Tech Innovation Hub from Ushahidi on Vimeo.

Photo Credit: whiteafrican

Nathaniel Whittemore is the founder of Assetmap. Previously he was the founding director of the Northwestern University Center for Global Engagement.
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