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 Harvard Law School Kenya 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.