Who must tell Africa's story?
The longest and loudest complaint by African leaders is that western media portray Africa as desperate and hopeless, and the west has now responded.
The complaints have been directed to the global media houses such as the CNN, BBC, AP, AFP and Reuters, which have been accused of only covering civil wars, hunger, corruption and deprivation in Africa - according to them these form the bulk of African content on the internet.
However, the response does not come from the big media, but from a group of Dutch journalists who felt the situation should change and started a website www.africanews.com.
Africanews.com is a website dedicated to African story tellers to tell their stories to the world without any inhibitions. The website is about politics, social as well as the economic challenges and successes in the continent.
The stories, photographs and videos are uploaded to the site and will reach audiences in Europe, the America, Australia, Asia and Africa. This is calculated to improve on the variety and content of stories available on the internet.
According to Elles van Gelder, the South African representative, the website has received critical acclaim and is hoping to recruit journalists and bloggers from every African country.
"Why should western media fly in journalists while there are local journalists willing to tell the stories? We tap the talent, train them, and they become better writers, photographers and can take good videos," said van Gelder.
The organisation has started a pilot project for reporting using state of the art mobile phones that can shoot video and upload to the website. This project will be tested during the general elections in Kenya, scheduled for December this year.
To establish the reliability of mobile phones in reporting, Van Gelder said a group of Dutch students will embark on an Africa-wide trip, testing the mobile phones and the challenges they will face.
This, van Gelder added, will help improve the quality of African content available on the internet, and the stories that come from the continent.
Meanwhile, Africa's best rural stories remain untold, because journalists and bloggers have concentrated in urban areas and neglected rural areas, said Tanzanian journalist Ansbert Ngurumo.
Presenting at the Digital Citizens Indaba, Ngurumo indicted journalists and bloggers for the insufficient content of African stories on the internet.
"The stories have to cover the feelings and aspirations of people. Most of the stories cultural, social and political are in the rural areas. These rural people are isolated because they have no access to the technology and if they do, they may not be able to blog or publish their stories," Ngurumo added.
In developing local content, Ngurumo argued Africans have to develop the civic will to blog more because "it does not take political will to start and maintain a blog." Ngurumo told the Indaba that Africa has to 'villagize' the internet and make sure that people in the rural areas blog, podcast and tell their stories to the world.
Speaking about lack of a critical mass of African languages on the internet, Ngurumo said he chose to blog in Swahili because that is the language he knows best and is spoken by about 100 million people in east, and central parts of southern Africa.
"Why would I want to blog in English yet 100 million Africans communicate in Swahili"? he asked.
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