The beauty of running a private blog is that I can actually cover various topics, without being forced to please anyone with a certain quality of content. As time goes by and rants pass through the fingers, different stories have been told so far and it was on the commuter train this evening at 8 pm when I realized my blog is 2 years old.
I started blogging in June 2005 because of a) Mzeecedric, who encouraged me to do so, b) i had an idle website and c) another community website refused to publish a story of mine (much unlike the Kenya Times :-), so I opted to publish my stuff on my own website. And although I sometimes feel the urge to write in my mothertongue, most of my entries have been in English so far.
That’s 2 years of this still burning desire inside to share a lot of small and a few huge things with the world out there. Sharing, and also a desire to write about people, describing situations, often, not always, trying to portray a glimpse at another world. A subjective view, my thoughts on a few things of interest.
My favourite entries of course are these DoItYourself (DIY) projects like the water filter and/or the hinge issue with Irene’s notebook - both entries I am still getting lots of hits for on a daily basis.
Interestingly, the water filter issue - as I sometime later on realized that there’s another NGO in Kenya actually promoting the filter system I built - served as another hint for me to formulate an idea I’ve since then been working on. Have you ever wondered about the work of some NGOs, active in the sector of environmental protection, that just reaches a few selected groups? Capacity building, as they so often call it, still is an interesting subject.
But I digress.
I think it’s the silence of these warm summer nights, paired with the reflective mood on the train tonight that made me pull out my (paper!) notebook and put down a few lines I wished to directly type into a still non-existing PDA instead. And it may also be influenced by the book I am currently reading:
Michela Wrong’s “In the footsteps of Mr Kurtz” - a book I’ve bought in July 2001 and had left in the shelve since then, waiting for the perfect reading moment to arrive.

“New Zaire Inn” in Garissa, Kenya, later on renamed to D.R.C….
While Michela has a disputatious way of reporting her stories and apparently isn’t always welcomed by her hosts, I like this particular book. She actually describes the scenery in old Zaire pretty vivid, and what I - of course - love is that special part about les sapeurs - these men who dress in expensive fashion clothes and aim to be different any given moment.
The Congo.
As a blogger, I of course associate this with “007 in Africa” and am reminded of those hectic days in 1996/97 when a completely confused former president Mobutu, who had for long already lost any reality for his role as president of a nation that has always been in the waiting line, flew into exile. Ahhh. Memories.
That’s 10 years ago! It feels like yesterday.
Waiting 6 years before eventually reading Michela’s “brilliant account of Africa’s most extraordinary dictator” (the Economist) wasn’t such a bad idea afer all. The distance provides the needed room which is required to enjoy movies like this one.
This is the year or the rebirth of news coverage in Africa. It’s driven partly by the growth in non-traditional news stories brought about by blogs, but it is also a part of the greater change on the internet that is taking place. More people are getting involved - and the people are in control.
We’re seeing the beginnings of a new wave of websites and a new way of reading news. Here is a basic rundown of the current new offerings that cover news on a pan-African level:
African Path
Joshua Wanyama started African Path at the beginning of the year. He acts as an editor, bringing in stories from the AP and Reuters, filtering them for the most interesting news in Africa. More importantly, African Path has a stable of 38 bloggers who weigh in on issues that are interesting to people in the diaspora and within Africa.
AfricanLoft
AfricanLoft launched in May, just last month. Imnakoya, a well known African blogger living in the US, has put together a website that aggregates African news, African blogs and creates a sense of community. There are areas to upload images and video, as well as a stable 20 bloggers (which I’m sure will grow soon), that also write about Africa-focused issues.
Afrigator
Afrigator, also launched this year, is a blog aggregator for Africa. The Afrigator team informs me that they are tracking close to 800 blogs from 32 countries. Though the number of bloggers, and those who read African blogs, is still small Afrigator represents the beginnings of a new trend. Where African Path and AfricanLoft pay homage to their blogging roots, Afrigator IS the voice of the African blogosphere.
AllAfrica
I can’t leave AllAfrica out of this mix. They have been part of this transformation, and on the forefront of news coverage in Africa for a long time, specifically they aggregate the newspapers from all over the continent. That’s no small task! They have the best connections in this space, I hope that they continue to innovate so that they remain relevant.
Muti
The last piece of the puzzle is a community-based approach to African news. Muti allows anyone who finds an interesting tid-bit of news on Africa to provide a link to it in one centralized place. It’s a filter for “interesting” for both bloggers and news readers alike.
In Summary
I’m excited about the way technologists are stepping up to solve the information gap in Africa. I’m even more interested in seeing how these different entities will evolve through this year. Knowing most of them personally, and knowing the amount of hard work and time they spend on their websites, I’m convinced that continued growth is in order.
[Update: if you feel that I missed a particular site, especially if it’s not in English, please let me know. I am burdened with a language barrier called French, so many times those great Francophone websites are missed by me.]
I have serious issues with guys who try to stop peeps from talking to the peeps they’ve fallen out with. Thats a mouthfull I know….Thats just childish…
Will be blogging about a hen night I went to soon..as soon as I have the pics!
“What do the Millenium Development Goals have in common with travelling to Mars?”
Again, on February 6, 2007, there was a news report that the U.S. President, George Bush, had authorised the establishment of a “command centre for Africa” to oversee US military activities on the continent. “This new command,” said President Bush, “will strengthen our security cooperation with Africa.” The U.S, he said, would ‘consult’ with Africa later, yet he had talked of ‘cooperation with Africa” earlier. In analysing this new U.S. initiative, a BBC correspondent stated that, “The U.S. gets more than 10% of its oil from Africa and is worried about increased economic and diplomatic competition from China.” Anyway, views or criticisms about Chirac or Bush are not the essence of this article, but the question as to whether China’s involvement in Africa is imperialistic.
Experienced bloggers are by nature a questioning lot. A less kind person would call us a cynical lot. You tell us something, we will question it. You raise a point, we will debate it. You lie, you will eventually get caught, usually by another blogger who notices inconsistencies. Like a girl on a first date, we are not easily impressed. To remix that old quote, you can fool one blogger one time, but you can’t fool all the bloggers all the time.
Experienced bloggers are by nature an articulate lot. We spend hours each week not just telling but analysing whatever we find important. It is vital that we are able to put our point across to our readers. We defend our positions, usually by employing intellectual debate. Experienced bloggers are generally not dazzled by your personality, popularity, or prosperity. We want to hear what you have to say and we will judge you on that basis.
So this TED Global thing, what is it about it that has us who attended walking around on cloud nine, talking about a “cheetah generation” and “forget making poverty history we want to make Africans rich“? It is almost like we were indoctrinated by the some powerful force. Every single blogger who was lucky enough to have the opportunity to attend TED Global came out very very very very very impressed!. Why? Recently we got an email asking us to rate the conference, the organisation, the speakers on scale from poor to excellent. Talking with some other TEDsters over the weekend we were of the opinion that the scale should start at bloody brilliant and end at flipping unbelievable. (Thanks Hash for putting all those links together!)
In my experience there are a couple of reasons why I had a fantastic time.
I lie in bed sometimes thinking about Kenya and Africa and I can not sleep because my head starts feeling like it is about to explode. Where is the light at the end of the tunnel? In what way can I be most helpful? Where do we even begin? At TED Global I was in a whole room of people who go through the same thing. Young people across the continent who have a passion about this motherland called Africa that really surpasses all logic. They see what you are doing, you see what they are doing and suddenly you realise that you are not alone, and you do not have to do it alone. Instead of wondering if we will ever rise, now I am like, there is no way, absolutely no way that anyone can keep us down. The next 20 years will not be like the last 20 years, that I can guarantee you. In 2027 this will be the most linked post on Mentalacrobatics and you can all start calling me prophet!
What a speaker line up. You walked out of the room rubbing your head wondering how you are going to process all that knowledge. Next time you bump into one of those idiots who starts asking you questions like, “where is the African Mozart, or where is the African Brunel, implying that Africans do not think send them a copy of Ron Eglash’s study of fractals in African architecture and watch their heads explode as they try to understand just what the hell is going on, and that is just one of many many examples that were shared at this conference. Sending txt messages in Amharic, no problem, want to build a computer that thinks like a brain, easy peasy.
This is the big one for me. I have often wondered how it would have felt to attend THE pan African conference of all pan African conferences, The All-African People’s Conference in Accra in 1958 as the wind of independence was sweeping over the continent. How exhilarating it must have felt to watch freedom galloping over the horizon coming closer and closer as one colonial power after another was kicked out. But I wondered more about how powerful it must have been to walk into a room and you have all those brains there, all those visionaries in one place at one time. Imagine standing in the queue for lunch and you see Nyerere chatting with Lumumba or W.E.B DuBois sharing a knock-knock joke with Nkrumah or something like that. At TED Global I got that same buzz, you got the sense that there were people in that room that would revolutionise this continent. Now you know why I was smiling strangely at all of you at lunch at TED, I was trying to figure out which one of you was Nyerere and which one was Lumumba, who would be DuBois and who Nkrumah! In the 1958 conference they elected a young man called Tom Mboya from Kenya as their chairman, in his summing up speech he called for a reversal of the Scramble for Africa addressing the colonial powers thus:
“Your time has past, Africa must be free. Scram from Africa.”
Substitute colonial powers then for your pet hate today. Corruption, nepotism, tribalism, maybe even neo-colonialism? Whatever it is, tell it to scram from Africa. Like 50 years ago, change must come and change is in the air and that change is unavoidable. But we have learnt the lessons of 50 years ago, this time the pact between African leaders and African people must be paramount.
Kudos to the Tom Mboya of TED Global, Emeka Okafor.
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Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
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only 10 per cent of kenya websites are relevant
Having a website maybe the most fashionable thing for many Kenyan companies, but how many websites are relevant? How many have content that is important to local people?
Michuki Mwangi, Chief Executive Officer at KENIC reckons that 90% of the websites in Kenya are irrelevant and user unfriendly. The 10% are under construction, and remain so for a long time.
At the monthly forum, Michuki indicted many organizations of developing websites that don’t give visitors reason to come back, because they have same information after three years.
“Less than 50 % of the content of the web is irrelevant and does not address the core functions of the organizations,” said Michuki.
For instance, Nakumatt Holdings website; it has a slide show of buildings, information about the company and very little about the products available and the prices. Uchumi website has information about products and the prices but is limited to products on special offer.
Compared to Tesco super market in the UK- all the walkways are listed, groceries, finance, media information occupies less space, and maximizes on their core business.
The Kenya Airports Authority (KAA) website is equally incapable of providing flight information, parking costs and directions to and from the airport. The website does not load up easily and has more information on tourism compared to its core functions.
With the website being labeled as off the mark, one participant commented that even the boards at the airport do not work.
compare to the British Airports Authority website- it has flight information, how to leave from one airport to the next, car park direction and fees, security alerts among other features.
Telkom scored higher marks, had all the information about their services, loads fast but there is no way to purchase the services online, one has to fill forms and visit agents to get services.
Michuki argued that the main problem lies in the fact that websites have been labeled as “IT jobs” and are only there, not to help in marketing. In this respect, many organizations leave website management to their IT departments and do nothing to improve on the content available.
To redress this, organizations need to identify right target group, build online social networks, and collaborations between academia, media and government to ensure that content is generated.
ends