South African urban geographer and artist Ismail Farouk and Iranian web developer from the Netherlands Babak Fakhamzadeh won the price for sowetouprisings.com.

The awards are given annually at the Highway Africa Conference to recognise and promote the creative, innovative and appropriate use of new media technology in Africa. Judges are looking for innovative applications of New Media in African journalism and the media

Winner www.sowetouprisings.com stemmed from a research project for the Hector Pieterson (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hector_Pieterson) museum in Soweto. ‘The objective was to map the school routes of the 1976 uprisings,’ tells Farouk (33) in Grahamstown. ‘It is a google maps mash up. If you click on a location a window pops up, giving you information on the location and photos. As a user, you can contribute by uploading your own photos of the location using website flickr.com. We also scan the blog sphere to see what people are writing about the location.’

Other Voices

Important for the project was that it also maps other routes, like for example the one of the police in 1976 and another important protest in Soweto, the 1960 Positive Action Campaign of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) against pass laws. ‘One of the problems we are experiencing is that the history of the struggle is very ANC and male dominated. We want other voices to be heard.’

Farouk also wants to use the project to highlight the lack of internet access in Africa. ‘Globally we should be more aware of the lack of connectivity. In 1976 children went on the streets to protest against an oppressive education system en now there are similar barriers of having no access to an important global resource. They shouldn’t be left behind.’ Farouk wants to install his application in the Hector Pieterson museum to ensure the people in Soweto have access to it.

Other winners

Farouk and Fakhamzadeh won the price in the Individual category. In the Corporate category the award went to South African Vincent Maher, who is the digital strategist at Mail & Guardian Online, and who created South African blog aggregator www.amatomu.com The winner in the Non-profit category was a website on Islam, www.islamonline.net, also produced in South Africa.

Highway Africa is an annual ICT conference hosted by Rhodes University. Each year, more than 500 delegates from across the globe attend the conference to discuss issues relating to Internet governance, ICT policy and media for democracy.