Grahamstown to Host Africa's First Conference on Blogging

Africa's first conference on blogging, the Digital Citizen Indaba on Blogging, will take place at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa from September 14 - 15, 2006. According to the organizers, "the aim of the Indaba is to equip Africans with skills relating to new media so as to empower them and the organizations they work for by creating an effective digital voice."

The Indaba will bring together bloggers, citizen journalists, media practitioners, industry experts and representatives from civil society from all over Africa and beyond.

In a welcome message on the conference website, the Indaba's Coordinator, Colin Daniels gives a detailed rationale for this first-of-its-kind conference on the continent:

According to Dave Sifry’s latest ‘State of the Blogosphere’ report, on average two blogs are created every second of every day. Technorati now tracks over 50 million blogs and there are said to be millions more which have yet to be counted as the Blogoshere continues to double every six months.

Sadly, as with Internet connectivity, Africa is yet to feature prominently in these statistics, and as the rest of the world speaks about one blog per family, this remains largely a dream which many African media organisations are still grappling with.

The Digital Citizen Indaba on Blogging brings us together in order to reverse this unfavourable phenomenon and debate some of the issues related to blogging and new media in the 21st Century. Like no other medium, the Internet gives us the power to challenge society’s injustices and allows ordinary citizens to question the actions and policies of their governments. Blogging, because of its far reach and networking qualities, is an essential tool in ensuring that the UN Millennium Development Goals are achieved in Africa and NEPAD remains a united and benevolent alliance on the continent.

While we can do very little to improve infrastructure and decrease the cost of bandwidth, we can make a huge impact by sharing knowledge and enthusiasm and demonstrating to the rest of the world that Africa is more than a passive observer in the global village.

Comments

[Yenwo]

This event has generated quite a firestorm on the African blogosphere. Read below the summary of one contribution culled from Pambazuka online magazine:
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'African Bullets & Honey' - African Bullets & Honey (http://bulletsandhoney.blogspot.com/2006/09/is-digital-indaba-internet-berlin.html) takes issue with the Digital Indaba on Blogging taking place in Johannesburg this week. He sees the conference as a way of “codifying” the African blogosphere which will end up excluding those who cannot or do not wish to participate rather than produce an inclusive blogging environment. A kind of colonisation process is taking place by those that seek to codify and appropriate the knowledge and ideas which are individual to each and every blogger. In short, the very aspect of blogging that makes it unique and differentiates it from the mainstream media, is being challenged.

“What really pulls my goat among all the ills of this 'inclusive' event is the corralling of bloggers – most of whom are just doing their own thing – into the donor universe. Consider once again the language of the Indaba which views blogging, at least in one aspect, thus:

“Blogging, because of its far reach and networking qualities, is an essential tool in ensuring that the UN Millennium Development Goals are achieved in Africa and NEPAD remains a united and benevolent alliance on the continent.”

But it is not just the “codifying of the African blogosphere” that annoys Bullets and Honey. It is the idea that African bloggers are being manipulated by a group of white “managers” or blogosphere elites who want to show that we African bloggers are not simply “passive observers in the global village”, but also that there is the possibility of a “market” or commercial opportunity not to be missed – a kind of new Blogging “scramble for Africa”. This ties in well with other ongoing campaigns such as “keep a child alive” fronted by Gwyneth Paltrow posing as an African in the “We are all Africans” poster .

“That we should now blog to show the world (read the West and white folks) that we are somehow worthy of their respectful consideration. What nonsense. Perhaps the way to 'show the world' is to have a conference of black people in the audience listening to panels basically made up of white people. You know? To hope that the authority of whiteness rubs off on the poor little African blogosphere. I wish I will be proven wrong about such panels but the defensiveness of the white Mandelas tells the tale. Ultimately though, whoever the panellists are, and despite the 'rush for white,' the logic of this benignly conducted colonisation of Africa's blog universe will have plenty of rainbow colored African volunteers.”

http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/blog/36988