Yesterday our friends from Ushahidi launched their software in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the conflict in the eastern province of the North Kivu has flared up in the last two months in violation of the peace accords signed in January. It's a very complex conflict with a number of actors involved (see a breakdown of the armed elements at the Stop Genocide blog) and a lot of confusion and misinformation about the events unfolding. The mobile phone number to send SMS reports to is +243992592111 and their DRC website to visualize the reports is http://DRC.ushahidi.com.       In case there's someone that hasn't heard about Ushahidi, which means 'testimony' in Kiswahili, is a tool for incident reporting in times of crises that was created at the beginning of this year in Kenya as a response to the post-electoral violence. Ushahidi allowes anyone to submit crisis information through text messaging using a mobile phone, email or web form, and to visualize it on a map or timeline.       The idea for Ushahidi was first put forward by Kenyan blogger and activist Ory Okolloh of the blog Kenyan Pundit, who amidst post-electoral violence in her country expressed a wish:

Google Earth supposedly shows in great detail where the damage is being done on the ground. It occurs to me that it will be useful to keep a record of this, if one is thinking long-term. For the reconciliation process to occur at the local level the truth of what happened will first have to come out. Guys looking to do something - any techies out there willing to do a mashup of where the violence and destruction is occurring using Google Maps?

      A couple of days later a few people stepped in, including Erik Hershman aka White African and a dream team of Kenyan bloggers -David Kobia, Juliana Rotich and Daudi Were. The Ushahidi engine was used again in South Africa in May during the xenophobic attacks on immigrants. Now, a few months after the birth of Ushahidi and its successful use in Kenya, the Ushahidi team has been improving the software (with the help of a bunch of volunteers throughout the world) and developing it further for its use in different countries such as the DRC. Working against the clock once more, the Ushahidi system has now been put to good use once again to to record instances of violence in Eastern Congo.       But what's the point of such a tool, someone might ask? When it was first used in Kenya, Ory Okolloh explained the purpose as follows:

Well, Kenyans have demonstrated their capacity for selective amnesia time and time again. When this crisis comes to an end, we don’t want what happened to be swept under the rug in the name of “moving forward” - for us to truly move forward, the truth of what happened needs to be told - Ushahidi is our small way of contributing to that.

      It looks like their main obstacle at the moment might be not currently having their DRC platform available in French and/or Kiswahili (only in English), so that it can actually reach the Congolese people on the ground. Also, the incident report gathering is relying on input mostly from groups on the ground, but getting the word out might be hard given the confusing situation and the lack of communication infrastructures in the region (plus the aforementioned language issue). However, we hope word of mouth will work as it always does and in the next few days more and more people will start sending reports. Spread the word.