Violent crime represents a daily threat to millions of Africans, particularly in the continent’s rapidly expanding urban areas. Contributing to this quandary are high levels of corruption within and distrust of many police forces. At times, criminal gangs fill the resulting security vacuum. Africa’s booming information and communications technology sector also has the potential to fill this vacuum along multiple tracks, from crowdsourcing community insights about crime hotspots to raising the effectiveness and accountability of weak police forces.
