In a similar vein, it took a national election to significantly raise the profile of FrontlineSMS when it was used to help monitor the Nigerian Presidential elections in 2007. The story was significant in that it was believed to be the first time civilians had helped monitor an election in an African country. As the BBC reported, "Anyone trying to rig or tamper with Saturday's presidential elections in Nigeria could be caught out by a team of volunteers armed with mobile phones." Although FrontlineSMS had already been around for over eighteen months, its use in Nigeria created significant new interest in the software, lead to funding from the MacArthur Foundation and ended with the release of a new version earlier this summer. The project is now going from strength to strength.

One of the most widely talked-about platforms today also emerged from the ashes of another significant event, this time the troubles following Kenya's disputed elections in late 2007. With everyday Kenyans deprived of a voice at the height of the troubles, a team of African developers created a site that allowed citizens to report acts of violence via the Web and SMS, incidents that were then aggregated with other reports and displayed on a map. Ushahidi -- which means "witness" in Kiswahili -- provided an avenue for everyday people to get their news out, and news of its launch was widely hailed in the mainstream press. Putting Ushahidi together is a textbook study in rapid prototyping and collaboration. In the past few months, the project has also gone from strength to strength, has been implemented in South Africa to monitor acts of anti-emigrant violence, won the NetSquared Mashup Challenge and was runner-up in the recent Knight-Batten Awards.

The interesting thing about these three projects is that they all proved that they worked -- in other words, proved there was a need and developed a track record -- before receiving significant funding. Kiva went out and showed that its lending platform worked before major funders stepped in, just as FrontlineSMS did. And Ushahidi put the first version of its crowd-sourcing site together in just five days and has reaped the benefits of having a working prototype ever since. If there is a lesson to learn here then it would have to be this: Don't let a lack of funding stop you from getting your ICT4D solution off the ground, even if it does involve "failing fast."