Mapping Change: Community Information Empowerment in Kibera (Innovations Case Narrative: Map Kibera)

Abstract

public, open, and shared information about one of the world’s most-known slums: Kibera, in Nairobi, Kenya. Other parts of Nairobi were well documented by online and paper maps, but the city’s most densely populated parts—the informal settlements—remained invisible. Mikel Maron and I started the project in 2009; in 2010 we founded GroundTruth Initiative to support this and other future projects. Our basic goal was to alter the existing local information dynamic by helping residents to amplify their views using increasingly accessible new technologies. Today Map Kibera is a community information project that includes ongoing digital mapping, the Voice of Kibera community news website, and the Kibera News Network video journalism project. The first digital map of Kibera is now available to everyone through OpenStreetMap. It forms the base of the Voice of Kibera website, where residents can post stories and information via SMS and web form, and they are then geo-located on the map. A team of young people covers events in Kibera by using handheld video cameras; they edit the video themselves and post it on YouTube. Community involvement includes drawing paper maps, public participatory GIS sessions, and work with local organizations on key community issues. Approximately 30 Kibera youth now form the core membership of the Map Kibera Trust, and our programming has expanded to train people in Mathare, another Nairobi slum. Kibera was not actually unmapped—it was in many ways the most visible slum on earth. The problem was that none of the existing maps were shared with the public or used by Kibera’s residents. Kibera is saturated with international NGOs, community-based organizations, and faith-based groups. It is common to see for-