Juliana Rotich Maps The Future With Ushahidi #designindaba

Herman Manson | Marklives.com | February 27, 2014

Juliana Rotich, a speaker at Design Indaba 2014, has a remarkable eye. Show her a map of undersea broadband cables connecting to Africa, and she points out that they still follow the sea routes that helped make Africa a continent of colonies not so many decades ago.

Rotich is the co-founder of Ushahidi, the open-source software developed in Kenya which came to the fore and caught global attention for collecting, visualising and mapping information in the aftermath of the disputed 2008 elections.

Challenges the legacies

Rotich challenges the legacies that have stymied the development of Africa’s material and cultural resources — be that broadband cables connecting coastal territories and ignoring the continent’s interior — or the political classes continuing to exploit its citizens.