Disruptive or Restorative Technology

8/7/2019 Disruptive or Restorative Technology

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Disruptive or restorative technologyThe USHAHIDI Platform

A couple of months ago, SODNET together with USHAHIDI and HIVOS embarked on a strategy to

harness the potential of technology in monitoring elections. The resultant platform was aptly named

Uchaguzi, which is a Swahili word meaning elections.

The platform and its development was a response to the need to challenge the paradigms of

electoral democracy, by placing at its center, the role and aspirations of citizens.

This was premised by the belief that SODNET, as part of the global community of development

practitioners around the world, increasingly realizes that it is the voice of the commons that acts

as a strong catalyst for change, especially in an environment where the state, operating as a

monopoly provider of services, lacks channels to listen or at times disregards peoples feedback. UCHAGUZI is a platform that leverages on USHAHIDIs web and mobile-based technology software,

enabling unprecedented collaboration between election observers, security personnel, electoral

officials and citizens to monitor elections in near-real time.

The technology based platform enables citizens to amplify their electoral concerns such asanomalies, bribery, vote buying, missing names in register, misconduct by election officials or

positive aspects, good practices and commendable efforts by security personnel or representatives

of the electoral body.

UCHAGUZI Praxis:

The UCHAGUZI platform provides simple technology tools that extend the role and responsibility of

citizens to actively engage in the protection of democracy while ensuring that government as the

provider of electoral services actively responds to their demands.

UCHAGUZI works to extend the common practice of election observation in seeking to engage

citizens or crowd in election monitoring as a valuable source of information for election observersto verify and amplify to the respective electoral authorities or security personnel in case of

violence in near real time. By engaging the authorities and making visible their responses,

UCHAGUZI increases transparency and accountability in the electoral process by making these

interactions open to public scrutiny.

The USHAHIDI software that forms the core of UCHAGUZI platform enables reporting from diverse

channels such as social media, web form and SMS. The reports are then aggregated into categories

and visualized on a map.

With the crisis of legitimacy engulfing the management of elections becoming a common

phenomenon, the founding teams observed that technology and the resultant partnerships couldbegin to draw the contours of a new electoral paradigm.

UCHAGUZI was first used in Kenya during the August 4, 2010 referendum, Tanzania General

Elections in October 2010 and Uganda in February 2011.



Challenges of our times:

The deployment of UCHAGUZI and the soon to be deployed HUDUMA are technologies that speak to

the need to re-engineer power and shift its locus from its traditional custodians to peoples. While

purists may argue that citizens and their voices require some form of coherence within the precepts

of objective analysis, the realities inform us that this concept, as in other dominant discourses, has

run out of its imagination.

The protests in North Africa and the Arab World are an affirmation that citizens agency coupled by

simple tools, whether technology or non technology based, can galvanized their actions towards

change objectives. The voices in the margins refuse to be confined and are beginning to re-find their

spaces, even occupying existing ones.

Disrupting the dominant logic of crowd sourcing:

In listening and reading on arguments that challenge crowdsourcing, the assumption bordering on

the objective logic requires that a citizens voice needs to be verified by a form of expert, whether

election observers or media. This premise is somewhat disturbing as it assumes that citizens are

incompetent of articulating their lived realities. It also assumes that citizens are untrustworthy andrequire some form of corroboration. This logic and as many womens rights advocates understand, is

hinged on the pillars of patriarchy and its many forms of expression.

While we recognize the place of verification, especially in facilitating expediency, the whole notion

of checking crowd voice against expert opinion needs to be interrogated. Uchaguzi Kenya began to

address this school of thought. Over half of the messages received in the platform were aggregated

under the category everything fine1, where citizens were voicing in our opinion, what we terms as

non value based information. This was neither related to voting or violence. Perhaps we must

relook at these concepts and evaluate from our learned friends, the notion of innocent until proven

guilty. Objective rationality and its derived ethos of economics does not see the logic and therefore

benefits for citizens to send such a message. Some have gone as far as suggesting the need for

providing incentives.

We need to disrupt, even dare to erase this logic.

Voice, naming the violence, breaking the silence, exposing corruption and crimes that are

perpetrated in the dark are key building blocks for empowerment. The voices of citizens perhaps in

expressing themselves in myriad ways, whether voicing electoral offences, demanding security or

services should not be hindered by artificially instituted bottlenecks.

The USHAHIDI platform and its derivative tools must be seen within the context of facilitating an

insurrection of subjugated knowledges2. The bill of rights in most of our countries, citizenship, the

role of the state as a guarantor of rights, the aspirations for a better life that believes in endless of

possibilities are beyond economic incentives.

Placing citizen voices at the center is a first, but critical step.

1 http://www.uchaguzi.co.ke : Category listing.2

Ivan Illich, Shadow Work, Vernacular Values Examined, Marion Boyars Inc. London, 1981.



The Power of Ushuhuda or Testimony

It is perhaps no coincidence that the platform in discussion literally means witness. As a product of

an oral and storytelling culture, the platform has been an extension of a tradition of civilizations in

the global south. Testimonies and stories have been ingredients for education, but also a means to

etch into history, our individual memories that ultimately form collective narratives.

Testimonies without being subjected to legalities or legal jurisprudence should not be viewed

through the lenses of scientific rationality. Perhaps science, in its ideological moorings, need to

adapt to the reality that there is need to evolve innovative tools and new methodologies. We need

to find ways that do not dis-empower the voice or testimony, but ways that speak through a

language that science understands. This could even mean a new way to transform the emotive

into evidence, the rational with the affective.

A new political imagination3

The Ushahidi platform and the resultant synergies are disruptive in challenging the fixation on the

mechanics of processes, whether of poverty reduction or democracy and restorative, in reinstating

the focus of such processes squarely on the needs of citizens.

For it is common practice to talk about poverty without actually mentioning the poor and even talk

about elections without talking about citizens and the social contract that enshrines the rights to

services.

A new political imaginary suggests a new model of partnerships based on strengths and

competencies, whether security personnel, election observers, techies and electoral official. In the

same equation, it even suggests that the competencies or expertise of citizens is their knowledge of

their context & situation. It even suggests a new technological imaginary that does seek to look at

technology as the answers to world problems but the possibilities that it creates in opening up new

spaces and alliances.

With its agnostic nature, the platform underpinned by the new imaginary proffers possibilities for

women, youth and other marginalized groups to make demands without fear of discrimination or

judgment based of societal prejudices: Its development deviates from business interests as the

dominant drivers of technology and strengthens the base for citizen-consumers. It learns its ideology

from the social construction of technology as opposed to the linearity of technological innovation4

This new imaginary is recognition that there is no one universal truth, but many truths that can be

born out of a conversation.5 It urges us to search more qualitative methodologies in oral history,

experiential analysis, action-research and fluid categories. The platform and the knowledge that it

generates begins to re-write history, not only from one perspective but an inclusive narrative that is

woven together with those in the margins.

If any lessons are to be learnt, citizens in successive engagement with UCHAGUZI in Kenya, Uganda

and Tanzania have convincingly voiced their concerns. The platform has offered in our view, a more

inclusive narrative where everyone without fear of contradiction, offers in their own way, an

account of their experience.

3 A South Wind, Towards A New Political Imaginary, Corinne Kumar; Dialogue and Difference, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005 4 How technology could contribute to a sustainable world, Vergragt, Tellus Institute, 20065

Sacred Mountains Everywhere, Essays on the Violence of Universalisms, Streelekha, India, 1995



This is how history should be written.

Philip Thigo, is a program associate, strategy & partnerships at the Social Development Network.

www.sodnet.org

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Disruptive or Restorative Technology