Press Kit
We've designed this section to be a useful resource for journalists and partners to get the official run-down of Ushahidi.
Who is Ushahidi?
We are a non-profit tech company that specializes in developing free and open source software for information collection, visualization and interactive mapping.
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What We Do
We build tools for democratizing information, increasing transparency and lowering the barriers for individuals to share their stories.
We're a disruptive organization that is willing to take risks in the pursuit of changing the traditional way that information flows.
Founder Bios & Photos
Download Founder Photos » | More photos on Flickr.
Company History
"Ushahidi", which means "testimony" in Swahili, was a website that was initially developed to map reports of violence in Kenya after the post-election fallout at the beginning of 2008. Since then, "Ushahidi" has come to mean the team behind the "Ushahidi Platform". Our roots are in the collaboration of Kenyan citizen journalists during a time of crisis. The original website was used to map incidents of violence and peace efforts throughout the country based on reports submitted via the web and mobile phone. This website had 45,000 users in Kenya, and was the catalyst for us realizing there was a need for a platform based on it, which could be use by others around the world. More »
Frequently Asked Questions
| Q: | Who is behind Ushahidi? |
| A: | The Ushahidi platform is a collaborative project created by volunteers and managed by a core team. Most of the development team comes from different countries in Africa, including Kenya, Ghana, South Africa and Malawi. We also have contributors in the US and Europe. The core team is made up of Ory Okolloh, Erik Hersman, David Kobia and Juliana Rotich who originally started Ushahidi in Kenya in their free time, and have since moved to work on the platform full-time. (Founder bios) |
| Q: | What is Ushahidi? |
| A: | "Ushahidi" was the original name of the web mash-up we built in response to the 2008 post-election violence in Kenya. Shortly thereafter, "Ushahidi" the company was formed as we started to turn the original web mash-up into an open source platform. The name "Ushahidi” now refers to the company and our flagship platform is now called the "Ushahidi Platform". |
| Q: | Why did you build the platform? |
| A: | The core platform is built on the premise that gathering crisis information from the general public provides new insights into events happening in near real-time. It is also expected to help organizations marshal efforts to assist areas that are not well covered in the mainstream media. |
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Other Products & Initiatives
SwiftRiver is an open source platform that aims to democratize access to tools for filtering & making sense of real-time information.
When you need to get the Ushahidi platform up in 2 minutes to crowdsource information, Crowdmap will do it for you. It’s our hosted version of the Ushahidi platform.
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