Ushahidi, one of the winners of USAID's 2008 Development 2.0 Challenge, was highlighted by the World Economic Forum as a "disruptive innovator" in information technology for not only developing groundbreaking products and services, but also redesigning business and society. This year, the World Economic Forum has selected 26 companies active in energy, environmental technologies, health, information technologies and new media as Technology Pioneers.

The companies selected as 2010's Technology Pioneers are active in important fields in the main categories of energy and environment, health and information technologies, telecommunications and new media. The theme this year was "embracing disruption". Disruptors by definition rethink and redesign, be it business models, innovation paradigms or societal progress.

Ushahidi, which means “testimony” in Kiswahili, is a technology tool that facilitates the crowdsourcing of information during times of crisis, helping in disaster recovery or to draw attention to problems such as election fraud.

The group’s technology engine allows for any group, individual, or organization to create a way to gather distributed information, aggregate it, and then visualize it on a map, timeline or chart. It also creates an archive of citizen-generated data that can be accessible for future study.

Usahidi’s platform has been used to alert authorities to shortages of medical supplies in Kenya, Uganda, Malawi and Zambia, monitor elections in Mexico and India, track the spread of swine flu and to map xenophobic attacks against foreigners in South Africa. The engine works as a free and open source platform.