Mediating Voices and Communicating Realities

This report draws on an original empirical investigation of Map Kibera, a community information platform that takes advantage of open ICTs, and similar initiatives to provide key insights on the challenges and opportunities for vulnerable and marginalised communities presented by this latest wave of ICT innovations.

The contributions made by these projects to local capacity building and the build up of a new information commons needs to be understood in conjunction with:

• challenges emerging from efforts to sustain participation and govern the new information commons in under-resourced and politically contested spaces

• complications and risks emerging from the desire to share information freely in such contexts

• gaps between information provision, transparency and accountability, and the slow
materialisation of projects’ wider social benefits