Why translate Ushaidi into French

This summer with a group of activists we advised some Gabonese to kickstart a geo-localized information watch around the presidential election using the open source Ushahidi platform.

We had decided with my friend Malagasy blogger and journalist Andriankoto Ratozamanana aka Harinjaka to implement a platform of citizen watch around the electoral process with the help of young activist Gloria Mika. Through a Facebook group, she was able to bring together a network of activists in Europe and Gabon. The activists she recruited in Gabon would have been instrumental in making the platform work. However, that platform never worked the way we'd hoped.

One of the reasons for our problems in launching Ushahidi-Gabon was the linguistic barrier. Harinjaka who was in Gabon at the time had lots of trouble recruiting and training Gabonese citizens who might use the system.

However Ushahidi could be of great use in the management of health-related crises in Francophone Africa. One might imagine uses in public health: an alert system linked to the malaria epidemic ravaging certain countries in the francophone zone.

I was struck by the relevance of the watch organized successfully thanks to Ushahidi around problems of medication stock failures in pharmacies and clinics in East Africa.

One of the main aspects of our initiative would be the speeding up of translation and the availability of systems like Ushahidi for Francophone African users. Erik Ersman, the director of Ushahidi and one of its founders seems aware of the issue. Here is a blog post he wrote on this issue last April.

Translation of http://francotechnogap.blogspot.com/2009/11/pourquoi-il-n-y-pas-dushahidi.html
Author: Archippe Yepmou
Translator: Alice Backer