Today Ushahidi launched Uchaguzi 2013, an election crisis mapping tool in a move the country have a peaceful, free and fair general election.
According to the team the Uchaguzi Kenya 2013 partnership is their contribution to stability in the country through increasing transparency and accountability by enabling active citizen participation in the electoral process.
The Uchaguzi platform was built by and runs on Ushahidi and is set to enable Kenyans keep an eye on the vote and provide avenue for citizen reporting. The platform facilitates unprecedented collaboration between citizens, election observers, humanitarian response agencies, civil society, community based organisations, law enforcement agencies, digital humanitarians etc. to monitor elections in near-real time.
According Uchaguzi, it amplifies citizen voices, allows them to play a positive role in elections before and after voting and mobilises citizens to be directly involved in protecting their vote and electoral process.
“Together with our partners we have measures to verify information we receive, measures to escalate information that needs a response, and measures to monitor that response,” they said.
Reporting on Uchaguzi is simple, citizen’s within the country can send a text message (SMS) on 3002, follow the @uchaguzi on Twitter and use #uchaguzi hash tag, post on Facebook page: facebook.com/UchaguziKenya2013, or email [email protected] and also use the Uchaguzi web form.
Uchaguzi is a follow on of 2008’s Ushahidi platform which mapped violence during the post-election period. The Ushahidi platform is now used all over the world to map crisis and cases of violence and is a joint initiative between Social Development Network (SODNET), Ushahidi, Constitution & Reform Education Consortium (CRECO) and Hivos Foundation with support from Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).
You can check out more from their site here.
