[caption id="attachment_198" align="alignright" width="150" caption="Zimbabwe's 50 billion Dollar bill "][/caption] That's Zimbabwe's newest massively inflated 50 billion Dollar bill. The Foreign Policy blog has a take on it that I find compelling and challenging for us at Ushahidi. This incredible inflation is leading companies, like mobile phone carriers, to start charging in US Dollars instead of the local trash money.

"Now, mobile phone companies will start charging customers in dollars in hopes of avoiding the burn from 231 million percent inflation (the country just intoduced a $50 billion note). That means the 94 percent of Zimbabweans who aren't employed will struggle to pay. "

FP is rightly concerned that there might be a serious curtailing of mobile phone use, and that very well could happen. What if usage doesn't drop by that much though? You see, I grew up in Sudan in the late '80s/early '90s and we had a crazy black market there as well. People learned to work the system, paying for items with the black market exchange rate, making trades and so on. Time will tell in the end, but I'm wondering if most people who still use mobiles in Zimbabwe won't find ways to stay connected.

Why does this matter to Ushahidi?

Zimbabwe is the prototypical "slow burn" crisis, it is ongoing over an extended period of time and it doesn't look to improve in the short-term. It represents they type of scenario that Ushahidi should be really good at being used in. Except... this is all hamstrung when ordinary people struggle to gain access to mobiles or the internet. Just as we saw in Burma (Myanmar), where the number of mobile and internet users is severely curtailed and tracked by the government, it's harder to get really good data, and to get people to send in that information. We need to figure out good answers to these regions that have low numbers of mobiles, or that are highly tracked by oppressive governments. Too often those in the West develop applications designed with the tacit assumption that governments are good and/or will act according to the rule of law, where Ushahidi is used, that generally doesn't hold true.

Using Ushahidi in Zimbabwe

Ushahidi is not currently active in Zimbabwe, but we'd like to be. Zimbabwe represents a country that we would really like to see Ushahidi being used in, but we lack the internal bandwidth to move on it. We need people in country to help manage a Zimbabwe instance of Ushahidi. To get local people sending in reports, spread the word and verify incidents. If that is you, or you know someone who might be interested, do get in contact with us. We have created an instance for Ushahidi in Zimbabwe, at http://zimbabwe.ushahidi.com, but we're not actively using it, and won't until the greater Zimbabwean community drives it forward on their own. From what we've learned in the DR Congo, we at Ushahidi need the local Zimbabweans and the diaspora to champion it.