African blogosphere post in top most read ‘08!

What a pleasant surprise! My story “De Afrikaanse blogosphere: tijd voor een update” ended up in the most read stories of 2008 on ‘De Nieuwe Reporter‘ (a well-respected Dutch blog platform for journalists).

This article was published just after I co-coordinated the Digital Citizen Indaba in Grahamstown, South Africa in September 2007.  It was a follow-up story, in 2006 I wrote about the South African blogosphere and commented about its invisibility.

Another update!

The third Digital Citizen Indaba in September 2008 was another great opportunity for African bloggers and new media workers to get together. We focused on creating and sustaining the African digital voice. Click here for the DCI 3.0 wrap up. You can find the presentations of all speakers on the same site.

Unfortunately Habtamu Dugo (Ethiopian blogger, lecturer, journalist, friend and old classmate) had to run from the oppressive regime in Ethiopia. I dearly wish him strength for the upcoming year.

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The article translated:

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The African blogosphere: it is time for an update

By Elvira van Noort

22 September 2007, Grahamstown, South Africa

It’s not easy to host and organise a blogging conference in Africa. Is there such a thing as a blogosphere in Africa and shouldn’t we concentrate on eradicating malaria or focus on protecting endangered mountain gorillas in Congo? Only during the second edition of the Digital Citizen Indaba it became clear what impact blogs have on the continent.

The Digital Citizen Indaba (DCI) took place in Grahamstown, South Africa on the 8th and 9th of September. The crème-de-la-crème of the African blogosphere, numerous Internet professionals, and media workers converged to discuss topics running from Web 2.0 to blogs in rural areas and from cyberactivism to monetising your blog.

But did the African blogosphere really change since last years’ DCI?

Arthur Goldstuck from the South African Internet research company World Wide Worx argues that it did. By the end of August he counted 25 037 South African blogs. To explain this phenomenon Goldstuck refers to the launch of five webtools that simplify the lives of bloggers and readers of blogs. The first one is Afrigator, the first-ever African blog aggregator on the continent. The launch of Amatomu and My Digital Life, both South African blog trackers, and the start of the new daily The Times newspaper that uses multi-media and social network tools are the other tools. There was also a rise in the number of South Africans on Facebook: from 80 000 at the end of June to 244 000 on the 5th of September.

A more practical example of the impact of blogs in South Africa was given by Guy Berger, Head of the School of Journalism at Rhodes University in Grahamstown. During his presentation at DCI he referred to a blogger who published a list of prominent South Africans on his weblog and stated that he had sex with them when he worked as a sexworker.

The story turned out to be a lie but within a week newspapers, online news websites and the blogosphere were writing about it. What we couldn’t think of a year ago now happened: a South African blogger faced criminal charges and a member of parliament shouted that the South African blogosphere needs to be regulated. This takes South Africa down a long dark path of the old endless discussion: how to regulate information on the Internet? And what are bloggers allowed or not allowed to publish?

Changes across the continent

Besides the obvious changes in the South African blogosphere the rest of the continent is also moving. There are still many challenges but most delegates and speakers at this years’ DCI are positive.

Remmy Nweke, senior ICT journalist in Nigeria, argues that “prices of owning a personal computer and other Internet tools continue to reduce and more and more journalists grasp the opportunity of blogging to increase local content on the continent”. Nweke gives his own blog as an example.

The situation is different in Ethiopia. Habtamu Dugo, a lecturer from Ethiopia, explains that there is still a filtering regime in place. “Because of the filtering system Ethiopians don’t have access to numerous popular blogs and news websites”. Dugo blogs anonymously because of the press freedom restrictions he encounters.

Blogging in kiSwahili

KiSwahili, an African language spoken in fifteen countries, has found itself a place in the African blogosphere. It was not a point of discussion at last years’ DCI but this year Ansbert Ngumuro from Free Media explain clarifies its importance: “it makes blogs accessible to around 100 million people who all speak kiSwahili, most of them do not master English or French”. Examples of kiSwahili blogs are Ngumuro’s and Ndesanjo Macha’s from Global Voices Online.

A list of the speakers and their presentations is available on the DCI website.