A new crowdsourcing ICT tool called CivRoute has been developed by four tech-savvy Ivorians to help citizens overcome traffic problems in the capital city.
Users are already praising the innovators for coming up with a tool that will help tackle the challenges posed by the nation’s limited roads as the increasing number of cars result in traffic congestion.
Cyriac Gbogou, a 32-year old blogger and social entrepreneur, is one of those involved in CivRoute and described the experience that led to the idea.
“I was once stuck in major gridlock when driving a sick friend to the hospital. It then occurred to me that, had I been informed in advance, I could have avoided the traffic jam. Fortunately, we managed to get to the hospital in time to save my friend’s life,” Gbogou told Radio Netherlands Worldwide Africa.
“CivRoute relies on crowdsourcing. We get the people to participate in the project. Teamwork is at the heart of this project,” he added. Via SMS, email, Facebook and Twitter, hundreds of contributors, often anonymous, send road updates to the CivRoute server.
Armed with the idea that would utilise information technology and social media to tackle the
traffic debacle, Gbogou partnered with some friends to execute the project.
They are Israël Yoroba, a journalist and blogger, Maryana Lym, who updates CivRoute’s content and Manassé Dehe, a web developer, who is responsible for sorting out data, geo-localisation and authentication.
