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Published on Thursday, 19 February 2009 19:00 | posted by Geraldine | |
Ory Okolloh, is one of
Africa’s most
powerful online activists and legal minds.Born into a poor family who could barely afford to pay her school fee’s
she graduated from
HarvardLawSchoolKenya to
found Mzalendo.com – a ‘watchblog’ that demands accountability from Kenyan MP’s
by monitoring what they do,writes Geraldine Royds.
Following the post election violence in
Kenya
in 2007, Ory co-founded another public website Ushahidi to which eyewitnesses
of war and crisis in remote areas can send news by e-mail or cell phone and
have it attached to a Google map. The idea is to get immediate attention and
relief to crisis zones and to fill the gap left by news organizations. It is used by Al Jazeera in
their ‘War on
Gaza’ website and is
in use in
South Africa
and the
Congo.
Ushahidi also helps to link a people whose tribal
differences, as Okolloh points out again and again, are often cynically
exploited by a small group of leaders. Only by connecting Africans can this
cycle be broken, she says.
In this TED video, she tells the story of her life and her family. Or read her blog at Kenyan Pundit.