Ushahidi

Angela Oduor Lungati is an African technologist, community builder and an open source software advocate. She is passionate about building and using appropriate technology tools to create impact in lives of marginalised groups. With over 10 years experience, she currently serves as the Executive Director at Ushahidi, a global non-profit technology company that builds tools for democratising information, increasing transparency and lowering barriers for individuals to raise their voices. She previously served as the Director of Community Engagement, creating and managing programs for Ushahidi’s diverse global community. She is also a co-founder at AkiraChix, a non-profit organisation that nurtures generations of women who use technology to develop innovations and solutions for Africa. 

Advancements in tech sector have contributed to marginalization and discrimination of vulnerable groups, with COVID-19 exacerbating existing inequalities. Social change agents fighting against inequalities also face challenges in actualizing change from awareness efforts, and mobilizing resources to support their interventions. We imagine a world where everyone has access to resources they need to fight for social justice. We build open source technology, enabling social change agents to: amplify stories and respond to critical issues. We also build their capacity to leverage technology through strategic support. This project focuses on: continued provision of tech tools for free(eliminating cost barriers), widening reach to vulnerable groups in low connectivity and literacy areas through integration of new data sources; improved support to users to accelerate impact and research to inform additional support needs. Ushahidi’s work is critical in helping those in need, building resilience, creating awareness about injustices and providing equal opportunity for all.

Technological advancements are perpetuating exclusion and discrimination of marginalized groups, as is evident from the COVID-19 crisis that amplified the gaps and highlighted inequalities. With the onset of COVID-19, millions the world over were forced into lockdowns that disrupted movement impacting on education, employment, healthcare and social amenities alike. Taking Kenya, our country of location as an example, over 850,000 children aged 6-17 are out of school. Despite the fact that technology provides a unique opportunity to bridge the learning gap for these students, only 20% of students  (those in exclusive private schools)  are able to access online learning. Similarly less than 28% of the 18m people employed have the option to work from home. This demonstrates to us the great need for what we do, which is providing access to affordable technology tools for grass-root actors so that all members of our communities no matter the context and situations they are faced with can be able to access the services and support they seek. Our technology tools and the capacity support,  we empower the grass-root organizations working with marginalized communities in actions that can make a positive difference in their lives and support them to address inequalities.

Ushahidi develops open source technology that enables change agents to amplify their stories, and respond to challenges. It’s been used for Crisis Response: Coordinating humanitarian response during crisis; Good governance: increasing transparency, and demanding accountability from duty bearers; Electoral integrity: Upholding integrity of elections and democracies globally and, Human rights protection: creating awareness about social injustices and human rights violations, and use these stories to lobby for change. This crowdsourcing platform facilitates: Data Collection: Using different sources of data collection (Web, Social-Media, USSD, WhatsApp, Email, SMS, Mobile App) that allows them to reach people wherever they are, adjusting to different contexts and situations. Data Management: Easy to use/effective platform administration (custom roles, permissions, access-controls, data-intake responsibilities, verification steps), that provides security provisions allowing them to easily manage, and interact with data. Data Visualization: The ability to visualize data collected from beneficiaries using a map, enabling them to identify trend and cluster incidents, thus supporting informed decision-making. Data Response: Near real time collection of data from the ground that can be used to quickly inform responses, supporting  an agile/responsive approach to meeting the needs of beneficiaries. We also build users’ capacity to leverage technology through training and strategic support.

Ushahidi’s work is predominantly focused on the following categories of social impact: crisis response, human rights protection, integrity in elections and good governance. Our primary beneficiaries are agents of social change. These may be individuals, local community organisers, grassroots organisations, social activists or international development organisations. Our secondary beneficiaries are: vulnerable and marginalized communities served by these social agents. Both need access to technology tools, information and skills to efficiently solve problems in their communities, which is often difficult due to high costs, steep learning curves, poor infrastructure, and inadaptability of tools. 

Ushahidi’s open source crowdsourcing platform lowers barriers of access to technology, and meets our beneficiaries where they are, by innovating around the tools they already have access to. It also makes it easier for them to adapt the tools to their individual contexts, thus making it possible for them to amplify their stories, respond to critical issues and inform decision making help them provide equal opportunity for all and fight injustices. Furthermore, Ushahidi has fostered a self-sufficient community of users and contributors who share lessons, provide feedback and make direct improvements onto our platforms and documentation, thus ensuring broad and collaborative effort.

From the onset, and 12 years on, Ushahidi remains committed to assisting and empowering marginalized communities to address social issues, by ensuring that those who are normally left behind have a voice, are listened to and, most importantly, are heard. Through our work, we ensure that grass-root organizations, working on critical challenges, have access to and are able to leverage technology tools, and the technical and strategic support they need to be able to better serve their communities, and respond effectively to their needs, and as a result have greater impact in their fight against  inequalities and injustices. 

The 2007 Kenyan elections, and results, were hotly contested, acrimonious and rife with tribal tensions that spurred violence across the country. Mainstream media was unable to report many incidences of violence and human rights violations, and the government was preoccupied with downplaying the severity of the situation, to the world. Kenya was burning, people dying and we were trapped in our houses not knowing what was happening. Then, a group of Kenyan bloggers (Erik Hersman, Ory Okolloh, Juliana Rotich, David Kobia) came together, setting-up a platform that would give ordinary Kenyans a voice when no one else would. They set up a web platform, “Ushahidi,” (swahili word meaning “Testimony”), that enabled ordinary Kenyans to send text messages, emails or tweets about what was happening around them, aggregated those reports and visualized  them on a map that was accessible publicly. This initial deployment shifted the way information flows in the world, encouraging a bottom up approach that empowered people to no longer be passive recipients of information but to become active participants telling their stories. Since then, 12 years on, Ushahidi has been used 180,000+ times, across 160+ countries, translated into 30+ languages and gathering 50+ million reports from ordinary citizens. 

From a very young age, I knew I wanted to pursue a career in engineering. My parents are both engineers, so naturally, I sought to emulate them. At University, I delved into programming and software development. While tech in itself is exciting, for me, I was interested in who and what the technology was in service of. This search for meaning in my work led me to open source, and the Ushahidi community.  

I have been privileged to not only develop tech tools for social good, but also work directly with  the grass-root actors, who use Ushahidi to fight social injustices. For example, I have mobilized and trained volunteers working to keep the Kenyan elections free, fair and peaceful (2013 & 2017) and spent hours supporting groups using Ushahidi to respond to COVID-19. I’ve been able to see and experience, first hand, the power that our technology has to empower groups that are doing work on the ground to enable social change, and bring people of diverse cultures to create a better world. These, and all the many Ushahidi projects out there, are the reason why I am still with Ushahidi, 10 years on. 

From assisting in relief efforts after earthquakes in Haiti and Nepal, to fighting forest fires in Russia; from helping citizens take control of their election processes in the US, Kenya and Nigeria to reporting corruption in Indonesia; from fighting the spread of HIV/AIDS in East Africa to helping women tackle sexual violence in Egypt, Ushahidi, has been become a key tool of choice used by individuals/activists, large development organisations and grassroots organisations in the front-lines the world over. Recently, our platform has become a useful tool for various organizations to leverage technology to respond to COVID-19, by providing a means of effective data collection and management, supporting the health response (mapping and coordination), informing and strengthening crisis management and addressing critical social-economic impacts.

 I am a  technologist, community builder and open-source software advocate who is passionate about building and using appropriate technology tools to create an impact in the lives of marginalized groups. With over 10 years experience in software development, global community engagement, and non profit organizational management, I strongly believe that my experience, and strong leadership over the last decade, and passion for what Ushahidi does will continue to support  us achieve our mission. Ushahidi has a robust team of 11 professionals experienced in the technology and social justice space including 75%  women, in seven countries (Kenya, EU, North America, and South America). Our staff are roughly 50% developers, designers, and product managers, with the remainder, focused on operations, program management, community engagement, and business development.

When Ushahidi began to rethink its sustainability strategy, we inadvertently left our community behind, by focusing more on our revenue generation goals. I passionately advocated for investment of resources into bolstering the community engagement team and nurturing our open source community. 

I had to develop our engagement strategy and raise funds to support this work, demonstrating its value. I managed to secure strategic partnerships (Digital Impact Alliance’s Open Source Center) that has been supporting our work since 2018. 

We’ve since been on a strategic shift back to our roots, and our community is at the forefront of our work. All the years of advocating for this work have culminated in my current position and Ushahidi’s work.

While serving as Director of Community engagement in 2019, the Ushahidi board approached me with a huge challenge. Nearly half of the 20 person team was seeking to spin out of the company with an R&D project, and they needed me to take over as Executive Director, steering the organisation towards open source work and a different sustainability strategy. The opportunity was exciting, but also daunting. 

I’ve had to build trust in my team as a new leader, and create a safe and inclusive space for them to work. This involved changing how decisions are made and making it more inclusive, providing clarity on where responsibility lies, including them in major strategic discussions, allowing their voices to be heard. I’ve also introduced policies that prioritise the physical and mental well being of our staff, especially during this global pandemic period . We also waived the fees on our hosted service, in line with our strategy, which has now seen an uptick in use of the platform.