Most of Senegal is a-buzz with the upcoming presidential election just two weeks away. After all, there is plenty to talk about – constitutional amendments, a stubborn incumbent, dueling political parties, campaign promises, and unfortunately, violence.

Word-of-mouth and traditional media are certainly still the main sources of information about the candidates, controversy, and election-day logistics. Still, the 2012 elections will no doubt set Senegalese records for social media usage. More Senegalese than ever before will use the Internet to stay abreast of what’s happening at the polls, in the streets, and in their government. Apart from Twitter and Facebook, a handful of online tools have been created or utilized in order to aid in the exchange of reliable information.

Senegal Election Tools:

1. The most robust of Senegal’s election-monitoring platforms, Sunu2012 is designed as the basis of a citizen driven initiative to improve democracy and transparency. It is part of the logic to enable citizens Senegal to make a good choice in upcoming elections. Here you can find information about the candidates, election schedule, and Google trends. There’s even Facebook commenting integration and a large Twitter presence.
2. CarRapide is a Web TV platform that wants to offer the opportunity for citizens to ask questions of upcoming candidates.
3. Elections Search Trends is a Google service to monitor the voting patterns in the race for 2012 presidential election. Of interest are search volume for individual candidates, political parties, and themes (employment, inflation, electricity).
4. Popsenegal is a web service that measures activity of public figures on Senegalese Internet.
5. Samabaat is a platform for information exchange regarding the 2012 election in Senegal. (site won’t load in the U.S. as of this writing)
6. Storyful is tracking and mapping news videos from across Senegal. Over 30 videos about the 2012 elections are currently on the YouTube playlist.
7. For the most up-to-date information, follow hashtags #sunu2012, #kebetu, and #seneweb on Twitter.

Please add any resources we missed in the comments!

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