Ushahidi.com

A group of bloggers in Kenya and abroad have put together a website called www.ushahidi.com.  Ushadidi comes from a Swahili word which can mean the following in english: Evidence, Testimony, Witness and Proof.

Hash from whiteafrica.com has been very instrumental in getting up the site and explains its purpose:

” As I mentioned in my last post, it would be good for us to have a tool to chronicle the incidents of violence happening around Kenya. That is the basic premise behind a new site that was quickly scratched together by a couple of us this weekend.

Ushahidi.com is a tool for people who witness acts of violence in Kenya in these post-election times. You can report the incident that you have seen, and it will appear on a map-based view for others to see. Ory and Daudi are working with local Kenyan NGO’s to get information and to verify each incident. “

The idea originally came from Kenya Pundit. Part of her reasoning is as follows:

“We believe that the number of deaths being reported by the government, police, and media is grossly underreported. We also don’t think we have a true picture of what is really going on – reports that all have us have heard from family and friends in affected areas suggests that things are much worse than what we have heard in the media.”

While I am looking at this, it makes me wonder if it would be possible to set something up in a similar fashion to track and monitor ongoing violence in some regions of Southern Sudan. Especially in areas like Jonglei where there have been so many different clashes this past year, but very little reporting or information, or more to the point very little accurate reporting and information.