Monday, April 23, 2012

My New Favorite Blog

I just discovered this and will be spending the next few days combing through the archives:

http://africasacountry.com/

It's a collective of over 20 writers, journalists, grad students, academics, music and culture critics and others who share their views on current events, sports, art and pretty much anything else coming out of Africa or relevant to it.

Their Facebook page says, "Beyond the project of ‘re-imaging’ Africa, the blog is a project of re-imagining a nation-ness that exists outside the borders of the classic nation state and continental boundaries. While counterproductions like ours are hardly ever ‘networked’ within existing power structures, we use the image field of the blogosphere to construct a new vision of self vis a vis networks outside the mainstream."

I have no idea what any of that means. Clearly, there are some academic types involved here.

Basically it sounds like they try to share, discuss and analyze news from Africa that represents the diversity of the continent, in an attempt to show people that it's not just a land of AIDS, famine and genocide. The guy who started it is South African and is now a professor at The New School in New York, and most of the contributors are somehow connected to Africa or have a strong and informed interest in it.

So far the content is fresh, intelligent and inspiring. Far better than the pseudo-analysis that shows up in The Economist and even less informed publications. Don't get me wrong, I love me some of that Economist, but it's still only a slightly more educated, British version of Newsweek.

Oh man, I feel like I just sliced a hole in a canvas sack full of beans. Through the first blog I just found another Kenyan blogger, who guest-blogged a wonderful article about the Kenyan presidential campaign at Africa Is A Country.

His own blog is here, and I love it already. Here's one of his posts, called Things That Bug Me about Kenya(ns) that I relate to both on a personal level and through many of my Kenyan friends, who expressed similar frustrations.

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