#crowdmap

Anyone who spends anytime in Nairobi quickly understands its tremendous traffic challenges. Before I left Boston, several friends warned me about the city’s infamous gridlock. Still, I had my doubts. Having lived in both Boston and Washington, DC—two of America’s most congested cities—I thought I was well prepared for traffic in Kenya. Not true.

Nairobi’s narrow streets and limited sidewalks make navigating the city an adventure. The lack of pavement markings including double yellow lines adds to the chaos. And good luck spotting a traffic light (or even stop sign)—they barely exist. Most drivers “feel their way” through intersections, an experience not for the faint of heart. The best way to describe driving in Nairobi is through the voice of my favorite taxi driver, Jimmy, who blurted out a few simple words as he slipped into oncoming traffic to avoid a massive pothole: “Kenyan style, Mr. Owen.” I am sure that my friend Bruce Hamilton, a former short-term resident of Kenya and current road safety expert at the AAA Foundation, would not be pleased.

Luckily, some of the entrepreneurial East Africans working in and around the iHub have devised some intelligent, lightweight solutions that are gaining traction. Consider the success of Ma3Route, a mobile/web/SMS platform that crowdsources traffic data and provides users with information on congestion throughout the city. Ma3Route aims “to bring greater sanity to the roads”—a noble goal indeed. Bigwigs at IBM, Microsoft, Nokia, and Samsung provide Ma3Route funding, guidance, and support.

Beyond Ma3Route, others from the University of Nairobi, Columbia, and MIT are working together to create an accurate map of the city’s matatu (minibus) routes. While the map won’t change the wildly reckless driving of nearly 100 percent of the city’s matuatu drivers, it does offer a valuable service to Nairobians looking to get from point a to b on public transit. The Atlantic ran an astute article about the project a few months ago.