We’re big fans of the Deutsche Welle Best of the Blogs awards at Global Voices. In 2005, they were good enough to honor our site as the best English-language journalistic weblog. Other Global Voices bloggers have been honored by Best of the Blogs, including Black Looks (founded by Sokari Ekine, who was GV’s founding Africa editor), which won last year’s award for best English language blog. The BOBs are designed to give recognition to a wide range of blogs from around the world, and they’ve historically done a good job of featuring developing world blogs, as well as blogs from the North.
So I was disappointed to visit the BOB site yesterday and see this map, which didn’t feature a single nominated blog from sub-Saharan Africa. The situation isn’t quite this dire, as it turns out – the map shows locations with two or more blogs nominated, and a version of the map that shows locations with a single blog isn’t quite so disappointing. Still, the overall message conveyed by a map like this is that there aren’t any bloggers in Africa, or at least none worth reading.
We can do better than this, my friends. If you’re not comfortable nominating your own blog (and there’s no reason you shouldn’t be), consider nominating some of the great African blogs you read and enjoy. I’m personally commiting to nominating an African blog per day for the next 22 days (nominations are open until the end of the month) – I just nominated the always worthwhile Bankelele. It takes about 90 seconds to nominate a blog and help us represent the African blogosphere in this international contest – I hope you’ll take the time to nominate one of your favorites.
thank you for the honour. I read about it Hash’s site and was shocked at the absence of any African content/apprecaiation
I saw the map where the best bloger are and shock African is not there. What about Meskel Square and other.
hmmm I just went to nominate Miriam’s Tanzanian Recipes (at blog.mirecipe.com). It is bilingual, Swahili and English, but there is no Swahili language option!! OK, I can list it as English, but what about the swahili language blogs I’d like to nominate? Surprising, as DW have a swahili language radio service (and amharic). Aren’t there generic language drop down menus, like there are for countries?
Thanks for bringing this to attention though!!
Excellent choice on nominating Bankelele – talk about a guy who has his finger on the pulse of the Kenyan business scene.
I wasn’t aware we could nominate more than one. I guess I’ll head back to nominate a couple more too.
I think it stems from the fact that, in Africa, access to information like this is limited. I did not know about the Deutsche Welle Best of the Blogs awards until today courtesy of this post. I will also nominate one Malawian blog, starting from my own, everyday up to the end of the month. I will also write a post on my blog to encourage other people to nominate african blogs
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