Africa is a Country

The Memorandum of Understanding signed between the Zimbabwean government and opposition on Monday contains a curious reference to discussing “external radio stations.” For those who follow Zim, this is of course a reference to the London-based station SW Radio, which transmits via shortwave, the internet and cellphones to listeners back home.  So I was curious about a a story in the Washington Post suggesting that “[i]ncreasingly, Zimbabweans are going online and using cell phone text messages to share stories of life and death in a country where independent traditional media have been all but silenced, and from which reporters from most international media have been barred.” The story, however, also points to the limits of online politics: only 1.3 million Zimbabweans — that’s about 11 percent of the population — were using the Internet as of March 2008 and only about 833,000 Zimbabweans — or 6.7 percent of the population — had cell phones as of 2006.  Some of the blogs featured in the story are This is Zimbabwe, Kubatana. SW Radio is also featured.