Erik Hersman (born 1975)[1] is a technologist, blogger and commentator who specialises in the impact and application of technology throughout Africa. Raised in Sudan and Kenya, he is a graduate of Kenya's Rift Valley Academy and Florida State University,[2] he runs the websites WhiteAfrican and AfriGadget, the latter being a multi-author website dedicated to showcasing African ingenuity. AfriGadget was named one of Time's "Top 50 Sites of 2008".[3]
He is co-founder of Ushahidi ("testimony" in Swahili), a crowdsourcing website created to map incidents of violence during the 2007–08 Kenyan crisis. Ushahidi has since been used for reporting violence in Madagascar[4] and election monitoring in Afghanistan.[5] In December 2009, the Omidyar Network announced an investment of $1.4 million to support the continued growth of the platform.[6]
In 2008 Hersman was named a Pop!Tech Social Innovation Fellow.[7] In the summer of 2009 he was awarded a TED Fellow Fellowship,[8] and the following year named a Senior TED Fellow.[9]
Married to Rinnie with three young children, he moved back to Kenya from his Florida home in December 2009.
He founded iHub, Nairobi's tech innovation hub, in March 2010 – an open space for the technologists, investors, tech companies and hackers in Nairobi.
He is the co-founder of BRCK, a 'backup generator for the internet' and one of the first hardware startups in Africa, which raised $1.2 million in July 2014.[10]
