Erik is the co-founder of Ushahidi (which means "testimony" in Swahili), a web application created to map the reported incidents of violence happening during the post-election crisis in Kenya. Currently, he is working with a team of mostly-African programmers to continue development of this new free and open source platform that makes it easier to crowdsource crisis information and visualize data. Though in alpha, it is already being used globally, in Kenya, the DR Congo, to monitor the Indian elections and by Al Jazeera in Gaza.

Erik Hersman is also the founder of AfriGadget, a multi-author website that showcases stories of Africans solving everyday problems with little more than their creativity and ingenuity. Fascinated by micro-entrepreneurs, gadgets and improvisation, he is proving that technology is changing Africa - daily.

Raised in Sudan and Kenya, Erik brings unique energy and insight to the world of technology and innovation – bridging the gap between Africa and the West. An avid blogger, Erik writes two different technology-related blogs - AfriGadget and WhiteAfrican. He is frequently a speaker at meetings and conferences dealing with technology in Africa, mapping, blogging and web application development, including; TED Africa, TED 2009, DEMO, Picnic, Pop!Tech, SXSW, Where 2.0 and Web 2.0.