A Shift Towards Africa

Hello again. After a rather lengthy break I've finally worked up the courage to post an update. There were a number of reasons for the intermission, including lack of time and lack of a clear vision of what I wanted to do with this space. Originally I had hoped to continue my investigation of the Iranian blogosphere. While I am still of course interested in this group, I have expanded my areas of interest. I am thinking specifically of shifting focus towards other geographic locations. Much of this has to do with the fact that I have decided to spend some time abroad traveling/working/volunteering. I'd really like to take advantage of this time to explore various regional blogospheres and the communities that they are created around. For this reason I'm hoping to use this blog as a springboard for ideas about this topic.

The majority of my trip will be spent in several locations in Africa. Right now likely places are Kampala (Uganda), Arusha (Tanzania) and Cape Town (South Africa), although nothing has been set in stone. Most likely I will be volunteering in these locations with groups that I hope to make contact with in the near future. Without much specialized skill my options are both vaguely wide and limited by experience. However, I definitely have some ideas about integrating my interest in blogging and volunteering. I'm specifically thinking of creating some sort of program that would link my hometown community here in the US with the communities I live with over in Africa. I feel that I could optimize this trip by educating both groups about the other and connecting them through the internet.

The obvious limitation on this idea is the fact that Africa is generally very poor, has very limited infrastructure, and lacks easy internet accessibility. I don’t know much about the specifics, but I can guess that the internet is limited mostly to large urban areas, that connection speed and technology are unwieldy, and that only the rich can afford to connect. While I see this as a major obstacle to any sort of internet outreach project, I also see it as a potentially exciting opportunity to increase access for people who might not have a chance otherwise. Thus, much of the work in Africa would focus on increasing this accessibility and training. Possible means of doing this would be by providing the necessary as well as training students and others on how to use computers and the internet (including, obviously, blogs).

I would imagine that there are possibly other projects already going on that are doing what I’m envisioning. No doubt bloggers in countries like Tanzania or Uganda probably work to increase blogging and internet usage in at least a limited way. I definitely would like to link up with these people/groups and learn how I can integrate my effort with them.

Embarking on this quest to explore new blogging communities is daunting. My experience with the Iranian blogosphere has taught me how ephemeral, fragile, and malleable these communities are, not to mention how vast the blogosphere landscape is. It took me months to feel somewhat comfortable with even just the Iranian English-blogging subset. Of course, I’ve begun my investigations by tapping my favorite global blogging index. I think I’ll need to make some further inquiries however.