Focusing on poverty - 1 Aug 2011[Cheers, Sindy Peters (@sindylp): Africa editor] The Somali region is seeing its worst humanitarian crisis since the famine of 2000 in the Ethiopian area. There are currently two regions in southern Somalia where the UN has declared a major famine. read more Happy birthday, Madiba! - 18 Jul 2011[Cheers, Sindy Peters (@sindylp): Africa editor] Today marks the 93rd birthday of South Africa's living legend, Nelson Mandela. read more Welcome to Africa’s newest state, South Sudan - 11 Jul 2011[Cheers, Sindy Peters (@sindylp): Africa editor] Congratulations South Sudan on achieving independence and becoming Africa's 54th state. Celebrations took place on Saturday, 9 July at the Dr John Garang Stadium welcoming the newly-founded country. It's an exciting time for the South Sudanese with a whiff of promise in the air and a new-found hope in what the future holds. read more Google releases Google+...on a leash - 4 Jul 2011[Cheers, Sindy Peters (@sindylp): Africa editor] Last week saw the launch of Google's much-anticipated social media platform, Google+. Uptake during its testing phase has been so high (probably mostly due to curiosity) that the online giant has had to limit user participation by restricting the number of invites sent out. read more Congrats to Fatuma Noor! - 27 Jun 2011[Cheers, Sindy Peters (@sindylp): Africa editor] Congratulations to Kenya's Fatuma Noor who was awarded CNN Multichoice African Journalist of the Year for 2011. Noor was awarded for her investigative series covering the "Al-Shabaab" in Somalia. read more Highway Africa 2011 set for Cape Town - 20 Jun 2011[Cheers, Sindy Peters (@sindylp): Africa editor] ITNewsAfrica has been running it's Innovation Dinner series since 2010, and has grown steadily since then - so much so that an advisory board has been set up to encourage further growth; six members currently make up the board. Branching out from South Africa, the series will be hosted in Nigeria and Kenya in 2011/2012. Those Capetonians keen on attending Highway Africa 2011, will be pleasantly surprised to know that the event will be taking place in the Mother City this year; so no need to schlep to Grahamstown. read more World Cup nostalgia - 13 Jun 2011[Cheers, Sindy Peters (@sindylp): Africa editor] Around this time last year the 2010 FIFA World Cup was in full swing, vuvuzelas were blown from every direction, cars were dressed in the South African flag; we walked around with ridiculous looking arm-warmers and yet wore them with pride. This past Saturday marked the kick-off of last year's World Cup - many still look back in nostalgia as productivity staggered and many spent an obscene amount of cash in order to watch the games, buy the memorabilia and share in the camaraderie and euphoria that swept South Africa and Africa. read more Mobile, the way to go - 6 Jun 2011[Sindy Peters @sinylp: Africa editor] According to research conducted by InMobi, 60% of African mobile web users are shopping via their mobile devices. This is a huge number considering there are 489 million mobile web users on the continent. read more Africa’s voices will not be silenced - 30 May 2011[Rod Baker: GM Content] Media freedom in many parts of Africa is under threat. In Morocco, a cultural television programme has been suspended while in Uganda, the police raided a private newspaper and arrested four of the staff. In Sudan, authorities there are holding a radio journalist apparently without charging him. In South Africa, with its much-vaunted 'best constitution in the world', the governing party, the ANC, is intent on steamrolling their controversial Protection of Information Bill through Parliament. read more Bizcommunity.com unveils new face - 23 May 2011[Sindy Peters, Africa editor] After months of behind-the-scenes activity, we're thrilled to unveil a revamped Bizcommunity.com, featuring a host of new features - from an expanded set of self promotional tools - such as personal profiles appearing on the front page of the websites as well as in the newsletter, to the ability to find, follow, subscribe and share with your favourite industry personalities and opinion leaders. New and updated features include Profiles (set up or update your profile); the Industry Wall which may be browsed by industry or category; the People directory which allows you to find people by industry, by category or job title; Follow and be followed: subscribe to the updates and comments of select individuals via the newsfeed by clicking the Follow button beside any profile; Showcase: individuals or companies can showcase designs under 13 different categories; My archive: you may now archive any content you find on biz to read at a later stage by clicking on the 'Add to my archive' icon found at the footer of every article. read more Erring in the need for speed - 16 May 2011[Sindy Peters, Africa editor] Working for an online media publication can be ridiculously fast-paced since news moves in and out of your inbox quite regularly. The upside to this is that you're always in the know; the downside is that in the rush of the exchange, you could make a rather nasty mistake e.g. read more Malawi media loses industry stalwart - 9 May 2011[Sindy Peters, Africa editor] Yet another stalwart of the Malawi media industry, Edward Chisambo, passed away over the weekend; the managing editor for Blantyre Newspapers Limited succumbed to malaria and hypertension. His unfortunate death comes at a time when Malawi could use the support of all its veteran members in the fight for press freedom in the country. read more Marking World Press Freedom Day 2011 - 4 May 2011[Sindy Peters, Africa editor] Yesterday, Tuesday, 3 May 2011, was World Press Freedom Day, marking the 20th anniversary of the Declaration of Windhoek, a statement of free press principles put together by African newspaper journalists in 1991 in Windhoek, Namibia. Above is the 2011 Map of Press Freedom, a graphic representation of country ratings produced by Freedom House, an independent nongovernmental organisation that has monitored press freedom worldwide since 1980. read more Take a page out of Ghonim’s book - 18 Apr 2011[Sindy Peters, Africa editor] It seems like just the other day the people of Egypt were taking to Tahrir Square demanding the exit of their then president, Hosni Mubarak. One man however, really stood out from the crowd: Wael Ghonim - instigator of the uprising via Facebook. read more Fans by association - 11 Apr 2011[Sindy Peters, Africa editor] Coca-Cola launched its Surprise your Senses campaign in Malawi over the weekend using music as a hook to attract teenagers and young adults into buying into the brand. They've used a similar approach in South Africa attaching the brand to music-related events such as the annual MyCoke Fest / Zerofest music festivals, as well as the talent search TV show, Coca-Cola Pop Stars. read more |
