Getting connection in Africa

The topic of this Ted talk was about getting connection in Africa because they barely have any and when they do, it gets shut down because of black outs. Most countries around the world have internet, but Juliana Rotich, the person who talked about this topic, is doing something to change that. She gathered a group of IT experts and created a software called Ushahidi. This software was created after 2008 when Africa lacked the information flow due to media blackout. But firstly, what does Ushahidi mean? It means "testimony" or "witness" in swahili. The idea of Ushahidi is to gather information from SMS, email and web to put up a map so you could see what was happening and where. And you could also visualize that data. Ushahidi was also used in Haiti to let citizens indicate where they are and what their needs are. And also to deal with fallout from the nuclear crisis. It also dealt with the tsunami in Japan. The software can show crisis maps, election maps, corruption maps and even environmental monitoring crowd maps. The connection cost is also high. If you are in Africa and are trying to call the USA, Canada or China it costs 5 Kenyan shillings, but if you are trying to call to Africa to costs 30 Kenyan shillings. This presentation was a serious one where almost no humor was used. Juliana was showing some slides that had data on it so the audience could get a better understanding of what they are trying to accomplish. She was showing the progress that was being made and what her future goal is. Which is to make Africa have good connection for good.