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Finance and Operations Director - Fahamu

Fahamu is seeking an experienced Finance and Operations Director to manage the organisation's finance and operations team.
This role will be based in Nairobi, Kenya but will have a remit covering the whole of Fahamu's pan-African programmes with offices in Kenya, Senegal, South Africa and UK.
The deadline for applications is February 10, 2012.

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Dust From Our Eyes
An Unblinkered Look at Africa
Joan Baxter

Joan Baxter eloquently exposes the diversity of Africa, the injustices Africans have faced and the strengths that have helped them weather adversity. She erodes the tired stereotypes of the western media and provides compelling evidence of the need for westerners to scrutinise their own countries' policies at home and abroad.

Buy now from Pambazuka Press

Latest titles from Pambazuka Press

From Citizen to Refugee

Uganda Asians come to Britain
Mahmood Mamdani
'On the face of it, life in the camp presented a sharp and favourable contrast to the open terror of living in Uganda. But it was the Kensington camp, and not Amin's Uganda, which was my first experience of what it would be like to live in a totalitarian society.' Mahmood Mamdani
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African Awakening

The Emerging Revolutions
The tumultuous uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya have seized the attention of media but what about the rest of Africa? With incisive contributions from across the continent, "African Awakening" presents the 2011 uprisings in their African context.
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Demystifying Aid

Yash Tandon

This pamphlet from Pambazuka Press shows that 'development aid' is not what it purports to be - the effects of actions of well-meaning allies in the North who support aid to Africa for reasons of ethics or solidarity are, unfortunately, the opposite of their good intentions.
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To Cook a Continent

Destructive Extraction and the Climate Crisis in Africa
Nnimmo Bassey
Exploiting Africa's resources has delivered huge profits to the North and huge damage to Africa's environment and economies. Overcoming the crises of environment and climate change means also addressing corporate profiteering and resource extraction.
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Earth Grab

Geopiracy, the New Biomassters and Capturing Climate Genes
Diana Bronson, Hope Shand, Jim Thomas, Kathy Jo Wetter
As greedy eyes focus on the global South's resources this book 'pulls back the curtain on disturbing technological and corporate trends that are already reshaping our world and that will become crucial battlegrounds for civil society in the years ahead.
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Pambazuka News Broadcasts

Pambazuka broadcasts feature audio and video content with cutting edge commentary and debate from social justice movements across the continent.

See the list of episodes.

AU MONITOR

This site has been established by Fahamu to provide regular feedback to African civil society organisations on what is happening with the African Union.

Perspectives on Emerging Powers in Africa: December 2011 newsletter

Deborah Brautigam provides an overview and description of China's development finance to Africa. "Looking at the nature of Chinese development aid - and non-aid - to Africa provides insights into China's strategic approach to outward investment and economic diplomacy, even if exact figures and strategies are not easily ascertained", she states as she describes China's provision of grants, zero-interest loans and concessional loans. Pambazuka Press recently released a publication titled India in Africa: Changing Geographies of Power, and Oliver Stuenkel provides his review of the book.
The December edition available here.

The 2010 issues: September, October, November, December, and the 2011 issues: January, February, March , April, May , June , July , August , September, October and November issues are all available for download.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.

Blogging Africa

Review of African blog portals and aggregators

Sokari Ekine

2007-11-13, Issue 328

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/blog/44420

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This weeks roundup will focus on some of the new African blog portals, aggregators, social bookmarking and technology blogs.

Portals

The two main blog portals are African Path and African Loft. Both portals have a list of regular authors some of whom are bloggers and both syndicate content from select blogs.

African Path includes a news feed of African news, a blog written by selected authors, an Directory section with a list of African related businesses many in the Diaspora.

“African Path is the premier online channel for reaching affluent Africans in America, Africa, Europe, China, and elsewhere in the world, providing daily breaking news and discussions on issues affecting Africans and Africa.

With an engaging mix of breaking news in Africa, blogs, biographical profiles, thoughtful discussion and an international community calendar, African Path connects Africans across the world with informed dialogue that leads to progress and growth on the African continent and its contribution to world culture.

To fill the void left by big media in covering information on Africa, African Path provides a forum for Africans anywhere in the world to discuss important issues affecting Africans within and outside the African continent.”

African Loft similar to African Path except it also includes a social networking community feature with a growing community. The “chatterbox” feature acts as an aggregator of the “top 50” African blogs though it is not clear how these are selected and for some reason also includes mainstream media sites such as Bua and the BBC. The “discussion forum” seems to be just an extension of the blog area and again the purpose of this section is not clear. One useful addition is the Job Board with a list of both non-profit and corporate jobs.

Both African Path (created by Joshua Wanyama) and African Loft created by blogger Grandiose Parlor provide excellent up to date content on Africa and the Diaspora. Technorati rates African Path with an authority of 236 (22,775) and African Loft an authority of 103 (63,934)

Aggregators

Aggregators are sites that auto collect posts from registered blogs which can by region, country or content.

Afrigator aggregates blogs from across the continent and the Diaspora and divides them into channels, best rated posts and new members as well as the real time updates of all registered blogs. Afrigator is described as

“Afrigator is a social media aggregator and directory built especially for African digital citizens who publish and consume content on the Web......You can use Afrigator to index your blog, podcast, videocast or news site (i.e. any site that publishes an RSS feed) and market it to the rest of Africa and the world. You can also use it to discover new sites in the Afrosphere.”

Kenya Unlimited incorporates an aggregator and a webring of Kenyan bloggers. KU also includes an annual set of blog awards to it’s members who must be Kenyan or invited by a Kenyan.

Nigerian Blog Aggreator is as the name suggests an aggregator of blogs by Nigerian bloggers at home and in the Diaspora. Unlike Kenya Unlimited, the NBA only provides feeds from Nigerian blogs in real time and is undated hourly.

Amatomu is an aggregator of South African blogs started by SA newspaper the Mail and Guardian. Unlike Kenya Unlimited and Nigerian Blogs Aggregator, Amatomu is more of a social media aggregator similar to Afrigator.

African Women’s Blogs is an aggregator of blogs by African women on the continent and in the Diaspora

Social Bookmarks

Muti is a social bookmarking site similar to Digg but with African content. Muti enables users to submit links to posts and media stories and then these can be voted on by other users. There are also “hot”, “new” “most viewed” and “stats” features.

Technology Blogs and Websites

White African writes about technology and how it impacts and can change, Africa. Erik is also a web developer and is presently working on a number of African related projects including Zangu News “ a new way to handle news in Africa” and “List’d Express” an easy eBay listing tool. He is also a contributing author to AfricanGadget.com.

Kiwanja.net with the tag line “Where technology meets anthropology, conservation and development” is a blog by Frontline SMS (software to manage sms) creator, Ken Banks and is largely dedicated to the opportunities provided by mobile phone technology in Africa and other parts of the global South.

Open Cafe is a non-profit internet café specialising in the usage, distribution, training and technical support for open source software and open content materials. It is based in Potchefstroom, South Africa.

* Sokari Ekine is online editor of Pambazuka News and author of Blacklooks [www.blacklooks.org] and African Women's Blogs [www.africanwomensblogs.com]

* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at www.pambazuka.org