Thapelo Sebusi
The Lehokela anti-crime mobile App lab by the UNDP and Econet Lesotho is said to be breaking ground in combating crime as crime as police are making more arrests than they were before its inception.
This is according to Police spokesperson Senior Superintendent Mpiti Mopeli.
Lehokela is meant to combat conflicts and crimes within communities in Lesotho, the United Nations Development Partner (UNDP) Lesotho Accelerator Lab has designed and developed a mobile application lab called Lehokela.
‘Lehokela’, a digital solution platform intended to assist in easily navigating observed conflicts and criminal incidents within communities was unveiled in August 2021and derives its name from the Sesotho language meaning community police.
After detecting and navigating such crime incidents, they will be reported to the police timeously for action.
This is the innovation of the National University of Lesotho Innovation Hub and the Econet Telecom Lesotho-ETL. It came about as a result of solution mapping undertaken by the UNDP Lesotho Accelerator Lab in communities of Mafeteng in 2019.
The solutions mapping is one of the important pillars within the Accelerator Lab process, used to identify community solutions to existing or future development challenges, through observation, collective intelligence and research methodologies.
The results are used for learning and to inform decisions on potential experimentation within the Lab. Mafeteng was the first of the ten Lesotho districts identified to explore development challenges and solutions for learning within the Lesotho Accelerator Lab as it is a crime hotspot, more especially with killings.
