When necessity invented global SoS

The updated software could be the most important application from Africa. Sitting at a café in Nairobi, Erik Hersman, the tall, bearded software developer, looks like any tourist.

But he grew up in Kenya, the son of Christian missionaries who did Bible translation.

He attended Rift Valley Academy, an American boarding school, before going to university in Florida. “I’m pretty much the only white guy in this entire thing,” he said.

A redesigned version of the website to be distributed to civil society groups free of charge is in his laptop.

“We have had a number of large-scale riots, so we have the urge to set up an SMS gateway,” says Awab Alvi, a Pakistani who runs Don’t Block the Blog, which monitors censorship in Pakistan.

According to Joan Razafimaharo of Foko Madagascar, a group that raises awareness about environmental issues, Ushahidi could prove beneficial.

“It will help us report events that may occur during a cyclone tragedy,” Ms Razafimaharo said, noting that tropical cyclones hit Madagascar each year, causing millions of dollars in damages and hundreds of deaths.

And Shahrzad Nouraini, who works for a development NGO in Kibera says Ushahidi can be used for feedback. “It will allow Kibera residents to respond to us.”

Ms Nouraini says her group, Carolina for Kibera, will start learning how to use Ushahidi in a few weeks.

But some experts are still cautious. “If the emergency is an earthquake, people are not going to be sitting at computers waiting to get information… they are going to run,” says Prof Michael Cervieri, who teaches new media journalism at Columbia University in New York.