On a night of shooting in Goma in DR Congo, SMS messages went around saying that the UN has given orders to the national army to put down their arms and that the town is now effectively in the hands of the [rebel] CNDP.
That turned out to be false information, but it caused a number of demoralised troops to run away and left the civilians scared and unsecure.
To avoid that and to make sure, that conflicts are not forgotten or ignored because of lack of information a new webtool is under construction, writes BBC online wednesday.
It is A web-based reporting tool allowing Africans caught up in political unrest to report incidents of killing, violence and displacement.
The site is a free open-source mash-up which can be run by anybody, anywhere in the world to to gather distributed data via SMS, email or web and visualise it on a map or timeline.
With web access being limited in much of rural Africa, people can also post incidents to the website using text messages sent from their mobile phones.
Lyn Lusi is the founder and programme manager of an NGO called HEAL Africa and has been involved in putting the Ushahidi project into action on the ground.
