Africa: the new new (new?) thing.

Image via WikipediaSean Park at the Park Paradigm writes:

One of the most obvious - yet no less powerful or potentially transformational for it - themes is the combination of mobile communications, internet and geo-location technologies to disseminate information and increase connectedness from the bottom up. This emergent collective intelligence is all the more remarkable, given the typical history of entrenched ‘top-down’ politico-economic structures in place in these countries. Much of the early innovation is centered around information gathering and crisis management with tools like Ushahidi (quickly developed in response to the post-election political unrest in Kenya earlier this year) and FrontlineSMS being quickly adopted by citizens and NGOs and having an immediate positive impact on the ground. It doesn’t take much imagination to start dreaming up additional - more commercial - potential applications for these kinds of platforms.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Kenya's Web 2.0: Necessity and Invention