Uchaguzi. Different perspectives

Do have a look at The Mikocheni Report's update here in regard of the Tanzanian elections and social media.

Do also follow the links to Uchaguzi, and notice the differences in people's voting experience.

That is if we can trust Uchaguzi?

Take a look at Swahili Street's post questioning the transparency and verification process of Uchaguzi.

As a starting point, I want to say that I don't think the efforts made by volunteers and the partners behind quite deserve the criticism from Swahili Street here:

I’d like to think that it’s East Africa’s contribution to social media, the Ushahidi driven Uchaguzi Tanzania Decides, with its map of events, many ‘verified’ and a cycle that’s almost live.It’s Ushahidi after all… i-hub Nairobi… surely they know what they are doing?

New things must be tried, and we need to give new methods a chance. I am, admittedly, rather keen on the potential of social media when it comes to participation, especially from corners less accessable.

However, I do fully agree with Swahili Street that it would be correct in the name of transparency to inform more clearly about the verification process of Uchaguzi. A monitoring system based (partly) on in-coming SMSes in a Tanzanian Kiswahili, which are then being translated into English by volunteers (of different nationalities) might loose important nuances, and might not be verified 100% correctly, as noted by Swahili Street. Crowd-sourching might easily create expectations which the tool cannot fullfil.

Obviously, the map displaying incidents, both positive and negative, is not completing the full voting experience in Tanzania - it can only be part of it, and it is extremely important that Uchaguzi is not promoted (so that people take it) as the full truth, but as part of it, and backed with clear information on the processes. Moreover, I'd like to see more linkage with traditional media reporting which mainly was published in the days after - and which The Mikocheni Report also refers to.

Hopefully Uchaguzi Tanzania and the partners behind will evaluate and share the experience so that we all can learn from it - and maybe have some of these questions answered?

Do also read this blog post 'How Useful is Humanitarian Crowdsourching?'