Tactic: Mapping Xenophobic Attacks in South Africa

Written by Simon on May 23, 2008 – 10:32 pm -

Description: United for Africa is a South African web site that records reports of violence sent by SMS and e-mail on a Google Earth map. It provides living testimony to the atrocities committed during the xenophobic riots of May 2008 in South Africa. United for Africa is build upon the engine of Kenyan riot-tracking site Ushahidi.

Organizer: Quirk, a web marketing agency in Cape Town is leading this charge. Quirk will act as administrators on this build, and the Ushahidi team will step away from it as soon as the build is done.

Purpose of Action: To create a visual map of human rights abuses.

Organizing Tools: SMS, Google Earth, web site

Outcome: The xenophobic riots in South Africa are still continuing.

Ease of Replication: It is rather difficult to replicate the Ushahidi map, but their authors offer help to interested activists. United for Africa is actually the second rip-off build upon the Ushahidi engine after Sokwanele from Zimbabwe. The initiators of Ushahidi are developing their project as a free and open source tool for crowdsourcing crisis information and then visualizing that on a map. They hope that they will soon be able to provide this tool for any national or international conflict. To reach that goal they are still seeking for more developers.

via White African


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Posted in Mashups, Mobile Phones, Sub-Saharan Africa, Tactics |

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