Kibera in Nairobi, Kenya, was a blank spot on the map until November 2009, when young Kiberans created the first free and open digital participatory map of their own community to fill in Kibera’s ‘information gap’. They noticed that Nairobi City Council mapped the slum as a forest, and that it was absent from online mapping resources such as Google Maps and Open Street Map. Map Kibera has now grown into a complete interactive community information project, aiming at empowering citizens and giving them a say in the process of governance by teaching them how to report on their own environment, allowing a greater participation in the democratic process.
