Africa is a Country » Internet

the digital doorway project

Sean Jacobs — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 20:52:42 +0000

Larry Stillman, an Australian researcher and blogger emailed me about the South African-based Digital Doorway Project:

“The Digital Doorway is a variant of the Hole in Wall project in India, where a robust computer is installed in a disadvantaged setting. In the South Africa case, they have designed a multi-terminal kiosk, using open source software that for all intents and purposes, appears impossible to break, yet offers an internet experience and general computer experience to disadvantaged kids as a group, rather than individual experience. It can be installed, yet remotely managed in extremely remote locations. Potentially, it could run off solar power and be used to wireless network PCs or other devices. It is a different approach to the One Laptop Per Child project, that has faced some financial, design, manufacture and political hurdles that reflect a market approach … Rather than focussing on individuals, when resources are more restricted, the South Africans have chosen to build something that can be used by many, and has been designed so that it is truly robust. And it has been conceived and designed in South Africa. It has been installed around the country with possible use in many other countries.”.

We’ll take all the love we can get (2)

Sean Jacobs — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 14:35:32 +0000

Africa is a Country featured on WordPress’s “Growing Blogs” list.

* The picture has nothing to do with it. It’s my daughter enjoying a Cirque du Soleil show.

Which country has the most internet users in Africa?

Sean Jacobs — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 01:34:48 +0000

Nigeria. The other news is that Mauritius and Seychelles exhibit the highest internet penetration rates.

Meanwhile, in a stroke of genius, that country’s techies have launched their own version of twitter, NaijaPulse (twitter is limited to the US, Canada and India).

Via: White African, and Global Advances.

UPDATE: See also Startups Nigeria.

‘The last place on earth [you] would expect to find an Internet connection…’

Sean Jacobs — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 19:38:23 +0000

This is actually a useful story about the use of satellite technology to bridge the digital divide — to bring internet to rural Kenya. The reporter or a sub-editor at The New York Times had to lose it though by coming up with line (above).

Link.

How the Internet is reshaping national politics

Sean Jacobs — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 03:30:39 +0000

This Friday. At the New Museum on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Full information here.

The Legendary Roots Crew has a blog now

Sean Jacobs — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 17:09:39 +0000

It’s like when someone you know finally signs up for a Facebook profile.

Here.

(They compete for my loyalty with Abdullah Ibrahim).

They look like Africans in New York?*

Sean Jacobs — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 03:10:09 +0000

The BLK JKS played somewhere in New York City last night (did the New Museum have to use the phrase ‘ tribal rhythms’ though?) I only get back into the city this weekend, so missed it. There must be other gigs, right?

* I stole that line from a Cape Town DJ. ha, ha.

‘Gay Arabs and Africans come out online’

Sean Jacobs — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 20:57:08 +0000

South Africa’s 1996 Constitution outlaws anti-gay discrimination, new laws legalized gay marriage in December 2006, one of the judges on the country Supreme Court of Appeal is an openly gay man, and the country’s leading AIDS campaigner married his partner last month (AIDS, incidentally, largely affects heterosexuals in South Africa). Of course South Africa is not perfect, but the same kind of story can’t be written about most other African countries. (Although he later apologized, two years ago Jacob Zuma, the leader of South Africa’s ruling party — and the front runner to be the country’s third democratically elected President since the end of its racial dictatorship in 1994 — publicly criticized gay marriage and told a crowd at a political rally that ‘When I was growing up, a homosexual would not have stood in front of me. I would knock him out.’) So what happens elsewhere. Here’s a story about gay people elsewhere in Africa and the Middle East do: they go forced underground and now it seems, if they have access, onto the internet. The full story in the Boston Globe.