I love twitter. You can do all the lurking you want to legitimately. Which sounds like a waste of time – and it can be – as tens, hundreds or thousands of tweets vie for your attention by the second but that’s also down to who you follow.

We check for Kenyan social activist and Harvard-schooled lawyer Ory Okolloh. She lives in South Africa and blogs over at Kenyan Pundit, at Mzalendo, and is one of the masterminds for Ushahidi, the only African winner of the 2009 Knight News Challenge. All the other winners are American.

For innovatively delivering news to their communities using crowd sourcing and mobile technology, they got to split $5.1 million. It’s a good look for the site which in its barely 2-year existence has propagated a model for citizen reporting in South Africa, DRC and India. Some of you will remember Ory’s inspiring TEDtalk presentation in Arusha back in 07.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0652vE9Q3VQ]

Check out our chat with one of our generation’s true forces for change after the jump.

Your tweet about hearing Franco (‘Maria’) in the car all the time as a child was spot on. My dad played that all the time too. What will your children remember you playing in when they grow up?

Everything from Marvin Gaye to Lil Wayne.  My daughter’s current favorites are Alicia Keys and Beyonce. I’m much more diverse than my parents were. I hope they remember that (but they will endure a special indoctrination into “old school” music).

Was your heart always set on coming back home after finishing your studies or was it a decision you arrived at gradually?

Always set on coming back home…there has never been any question that my future was in Africa…it was just a matter of when.

What was the most challenging thing about resettling back in Africa if anything?

In the beginning I missed the stimulation of the fast-pace of the life in America…the feeling of always being on your toes.   I sometimes get frustrated by how often people settle for mediocrity.

There’s a lot of nay-say reporting as far as 2010 world cup preparation in South Africa. Being on the ground, what’s your view?

I think South Africa will be ready from an infrastructure point of view, but I think the nay-saying especially that which is driven by South African’s themselves has dealt a psychological blow to the preparation which is just as important…the psyche/the build-up is just not at the level that it should be…largely because there’s been so much negativity.

Is being a foreign African in South Africa different from being a foreign African in the States?

Yes, there is more of a sense of comfort of being surrounded by people who look like you in South Africa and who share cultural values, but then there’s the xenophobia which makes the comfort really just a surface level comfort.  South Africa is in more ways complicated, in the US you always knew where you stood (at least I did).

I know you describe yourself as a cool nerd. What instigated your interest in technology?

My interest in technology developed from the first time I connected to the internet, and grew when I was in law school and working at the Berkman Center for Internet and Technology where I learned to look at both the regulatory aspects of technology in addition to the geekier aspects.   Over time, I began to see the power of technology as a tool to get your individual voice heard directly.

Kenyan politics is obviously close to your heart. What shaped your political views growing up?

I’d say my father who was a political animal in that he followed political evens rabidly and always spoke his mind, and growing up under Moi’s dictatorship where you couldn’t even crack jokes about him without fear…I hated the oppressiveness of that period, the sense of helplessness, the sense of a generation lost because of politicians.

What were your thoughts on the sex ban in Kenya as a form of activism?

I thought it was a very lame form of activism.   It made it seem like sex is the only weapon women have .

What are some of the things we will see happening with the site over the next year or so?

The release of the mobile application version of Ushahidi for Java phones, the Iphone, Windows Mobile and Android; the release of a plug and play version of Ushahidi that doesn’t require any technical ability to install; and the development of a filter mechanism called Swift to help make sense of the noise where there is a barrage of information.

Who inspires you?

Anyone who has been able to overcome his or her circumstances and taken others along with them.

Do you miss anything about life in the US?

Retail, retail and retail.   Yes, the US did make a little consumer out of me

What are the 3 best things about Nairobi?

The people, the nightlife is the best in the world (period!), and the sausages.