Primož Kovačič was the third and last speaker of the NCID Workshop on Urban Issues in Development Countries. His speech, titled Digitally Enabled Collective Action in Nairobi’s Informal Settlements, was about the job of his company, Spacial Collective, which works together with local actors in Nairobi to map slums and create information in areas forgotten by the government.

In the conference, Kovačič explained that they used the boom of ICTs to achieve community network mapping through free satellite imagery, mobile phones, open-sourced software, etc. His work includes young people from different communities to empower them and collaborate. In one project on waste management, they gathered different actors including government representatives and youth leaders, and they ended up realizing what was needed was a truck with a regular schedule, which forced a sharing of information that didn’t happen before between groups.

His company has offices in all the slums where they work, following their open-doors and transparency policy, which traduces in welcoming the locals and teaching them how to use tools such as basic GPS knowledge so that they can be part of the change in their area.