Map Kibera: Ready for the Elections!

by: March 2nd, 2013 comments: 0

Map Kibera has been working hard for the past several months to be ready for this Monday’s historic election. What are our team members doing to promote transparency and accurate information in the slums during the elections? Read on and follow us during the election in Kibera, Mathare, on Twitter and Facebook!

  • We have every member plus extra trained volunteers reporting by SMS from every polling station in Mathare and Kibera, and some in Mukuru slum. They’ll be out and about with special t-shirts and press badges looking for important news. Their reports will appear on Voice of Kibera and Voice of Mathare throughout election day. Reports will be approved by the coordinators of each team, who will also verify. We welcome anyone to send in your reports to (0726300400 – include location word Kibera or Mathare)! Reports are also integrated with Uchaguzi.
  • Kibera News Network and Map Mathare video team will be providing video coverage of polling in Kibera and Mathare. They’ll be editing and uploading throughout the day. KNN has already produced a number of election related videos such as one on one interviews with the local MP candidates, and Mathare has also covered some important events. Screenings will be taking place locally this weekend. Also, expect continual election coverage over the next week.
  • Coordination: Recently, the Kibera Civic Watch Consortium was launched to bring unprecedented coordination among community media and civic organizations in Kibera. Members include Pamoja FM and KCODA. Map Kibera has also built networks with first responders, national security officials, peace organizations and other important groups to access, contribute, and respond to information coming in during the election period.
  • Election maps have been created and distributed by our teams. These maps show the boundaries of each ward, previously not known to most slum residents, and marking their polling stations. These maps have been distributed widely to great fanfare in Kibera and this weekend the Mathare team will be covering distribution of their map throughout the slum. This voter information drive will help ensure that everyone knows where and how to vote. Look for upcoming separate post with downloadable maps.
  • Several weeks ago, our Security Map was painted on a prominent wall in Kibera demonstrating the likely places for insecurity and safe spaces.
  • Longer form blogging about the election will also be updated and can be found on the Voice of Kibera blog, and Voice of Mathare blog. These stories also will appear as reports on the Ushahidi sites.

How Rumours Lead to Violence in Kibera Politics

by: February 8th, 2013 comments: 1

This post by our member Steve Banner, of Kibera News Network (originally posted on the Voice of Kibera) explains how rumours resulted in violence during the recent party candidate nominations in January. A distinct mistrust of official channels of information is evident: if no one knows what to believe, suspicion and anger are quick to arise. This is one reason that Map Kibera is working to build accurate and trusted local networks of information in Nairobi slums during the upcoming elections.

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Destruction of Red Rose School, Kibera. Photo by Lee Ibrahim.

Kibera street political analysts, as I may call them, and rumour mongers, have a very thin line separating them if the happenings of the past few days is anything to go by.

After fierce campaigns on 6th and 7th January, the ODM nominations were to take place on 18th. The 18th came and people went to vote in one peace each confident that his or her candidate will clinch the party ticket.

After a full day of voting, rumours took over and went round on Friday 19th that the ODM Sarangombe county representative ticket had gone to Mr. Owino Ko’tieno, this was later to be confirmed by the returning officer at olympic primary school polling station.

The same rumours claimed that Mr. Amayo, a Kibra MP contestant had clinched the ODM ticket, hours later the same rumours reversed their claim that the confirmed winner was Mr. Ken Okoth. I never got to know how the confirmation came about and never bothered to ask since one didn’t actually need to ask, they would tell it to you anyway.

So I came to believe it when a friend told me that Mr. Ken Okoth had actually updated on social media that he had clinched the ODM ticket to run for Kibra MP.

It was at this point that the street political analysts of Kibera picked the story, and by saying street political analysts, I mean those individuals who stand by the roadside especially at newspapers vending points with a handful crowd around them, as they analyze the political situation of the moment. Try walking at olympic or kamkunji grounds, Kibera on a Sunday and you can’t miss them.

On this day, they took to analyze the possibility of Mr. Ken Okoth winning and how he had done it. According to one such analyst, Mr. Ken Okoth had only won in 2 polling stations and therefore could not be declared the winner. He argued that laini saba area residents had not been allowed to vote, and the area, according to him, was an Amayo stronghold.

As the rumour picked the story and went round with it, breaking it down in different versions, it seemed a group of youths decided to react to the rumour and marched to orange house in kilimani area, which houses ODM headquaters, to allegedly protest over why laini saba residents were denied a chance to participate in the nominations, where they were reported to have engaged in property destruction.

And despite the ODM electoral board announcing on a press conference that no certificate had been issued to any candidate yet, a rumour still went round that Mr. Owino Ko’tieno, who had been announced the winner of county rep. ODM ticket, had been denied the certificate, and, according to the rumour, given to Mr. Kajwang, who was also contesting for county representative ODM ticket in sarangombe. It’s believed that this could have been the reason for the rowdiness that followed thereafter that led to youths engaging in property destruction at Redrose school in olympic, a school that is believed to be owned by Mr. Ken Okoth, who, according to random sources in Kibera, was being accused of working to make sure Mr. Owino Kotieno did not have the certificate. There were several versions of this story depending on who you ask, and which side he/she supported and the mood on the ground. In one particular version, Mr. Ken Okoth is alleged to have been asked who he wanted to work with and mentioned Kajwang instead of Kotieno, but I could never tell who to believe among the several story tellers I listened to.

And even after ODM board made it clear that no certificate had been issued, the youths went ahead to lay barricades along Kibera drive near olympic stage.

Moments later, police from the general service unit were deployed to quell the lawlessness and violence. Running battles ensued, leaving scores of people injured among them 2 journalists from the mainstream media.

Director’s Diary: recent activities update

by: January 24th, 2013 comments: 0

Map Kibera Trust has been a bee-hive of activities lately! Despite the social context changing drastically due to a general security decline in Nairobi – the fear of bombs and terrorist attacks — as well as the fast buildup of election activities in Kibera, Mathare and Mukuru, our teams have done a lot to reach out to the community and meet our various objectives using our digital platforms.

In Kibera, we have among other things succeeded in conducting a re-mapping of Kibera, activated existing community networks through the community forums that we have organized, and enhanced dialogue with community leaders and representatives leading to better ideas and even new suggestions to strengthen our work. In November, we made the first major print-out of the edited maps and engaged in an elaborate map-distribution drive (see our detailed blog post) that saw us distribute 109 maps to 83 different institutions so far. We are already receiving great feedback that will help our planning for the next steps. KNN have continued making videos and posting them on their youtube channel. Voice of Kibera has intensified their community outreach to publicize the SMS line in order to improve submissions.

All three programmes have spent much time in Mukuru and Mathare helping pass skills to the teams in these locations and conducting in-house refresher trainings to prepare the teams for an elections related project sponsored by the United States Institute of Peace. All teams are now ready to engage in any kind of work. A modality of equipment sharing was devised in order for the other groups to get access to complete their work. Other than that, the USIP project implementation is on course and on schedule for Kibera, followed immediately by Mathare and Mukuru. The teams have completed elections boundary mapping in all the 3 locations and are currently engaged in the electoral points of interest mapping.

We have successfully set up project coordination points and project offices in Mathare and Mukuru which has improved coordination and is likely to enhance efficiency in the coordination of the projects.

Several in-house trainings have been conducted in all the 3 locations, Kibera especially benefitted from local partner organizations’ training curricular on subjects like journalism ethics and photography from Pawa254, a local organization and conducted sessions led by volunteer interns like Job Mwaura, who recently did a post-graduate academic study on Kibera News Network to be presented as a case study on Citizen Journalism. We have since agreed to expand these training opportunities to reach other teams in Mukuru and Mathare.

The organization as well participated in 3 major conferences and presented in 2 of them. Two Map Kibera Trust members attended and presented at the 7th ESRI user conference that was organized by ESRI Eastern Africa and which took place in Naivasha in early October. Later in the same month Kibera’s Director attended the ON –Omidyar Network Baraza conference in Accra, Ghana.

Kepha Ngito speaking at the OpenUp12 conference in London, November 2012.

Kepha Ngito speaking at the OpenUp12 conference in London, November 2012.

In early November, Map Kibera Trust was presented on a speakers’ panel at the Open Up 2012 conference in London organized by the Department of International Development, the WIRED magazine and Omidyar Network. These conferences brought together ICT experts and leaders from different parts of the world thus provided Map Kibera Trust a global opportunity for networking.

It’s worth mentioning that the intense activity in the period has exposed gaps that have threatened our work and hampered progress in a few ways. For instance, bureaucracy in accessing government structures and institutions for permission has been the main challenge forcing us to postpone activities that require specific legal permits. This item has taken more time to deliver on as anticipated mainly because we have spent and are still spending much time and effort scaling the bureaucracy to reach the relevant decision makers. We have however widened our networks through the various meetings and forums we have been conducting and even brought some of the decision makers on board. Again, with the changing dynamics of our socio-political context, we have realized the need to enhance our capacity to track changes, document and report them in good time.

Finally, we have seen the increasing need to enhance our community engagement strategy to facilitate the usage of the data and information that we distribute to the community by the community members. For example the perennial question of “what do we do with the maps?” still persist in the community and Map Kibera still needs to do much either in modeling strategy and obtaining resources to sustain the work already happening in the community.

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