Photo: Dawn McDonald | Unsplash
Kenya was gripped by a two-week fuel crisis in April as gas prices spiked and fuel was rationed when government delayed fuel subsidies to oil marketing companies. As people queued or took to social media for information, Kenyan engineer Leonard Gichuho built “Iko Where” (Kenyan slang for “Where is it?”), a crowdsourced database that collates information on where fuel can be found. At the height of the crisis in mid-April, the site had over 59,000 users, just a week after it went live. It is the latest Kenyan digital innovation bootstrapped in adversity; others include the crisis-mapping tool Ushahidi and the M-Pesa mobile money platform.
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