Comments on: Africa, Global Voices, and “Cool Anglocentrism”

By: the art of war

the art of war — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 03:43:04 +0000

the art of war…

…He wrote that . . ….

By: Global ça s’épelle Blobal at [fikra] فكرة

Global ça s’épelle Blobal at [fikra] فكرة — Sat, 30 Dec 2006 03:11:40 +0000

[...] Confronté au défi de l’anglocentrisme qui règne sur Global Voices, une volonté de construire une version francophone de Global Voices et d’élargir ainsi l’expérience de Global Voices Chine s’est manifestée. Le premier objectif consiste à traduire, en français, ce qui s’écrit, en anglais, sur Global Voices et d’atteindre de la sorte le lectorat francophone de l’Afrique, du Moyen-Orient, des Caraïbes et d’ailleurs. Cette initiative, approuvée par, a été soutenue par, Alice Backer, Jennifer Brea et moi. Nous espérons dans un avenir proche disposer d’un espace indépendant, genre francophonie.globalvoices.org et amorcer cette nouvelle étape dans le parcours de Global Voices. [...]

By: Joel

Joel — Tue, 26 Dec 2006 03:40:30 +0000

Looks like the Grinch came to San Diego this year & took your mix CDs.

By: elenamary

elenamary — Sun, 24 Dec 2006 04:11:41 +0000

completly unreleated and selfishly requested, what happend to those damn good christmas mix cds? Feliz Navidad mi’jo.

By: sokari

sokari — Sat, 23 Dec 2006 07:48:29 +0000

When I published the piece you refer to I was commenting on the fact that a technorati search of Africa in the blogs directory revealed very few African bloggers so if you were someone who was searching for African bloggers via technorati for example you wouldn’t get very far and that goes for any part of the continent irrespective of the colonial language spoken. My suggestion of a “technorati bomb” was rather tongue in cheek which most people seemed to take over seriously. What was far more important, and it seems I did not make that clear, was that Africa bloggers were not being recognised in a way they should considering the numbers of blogs written by all Africans whether at home or in the Diaspora by a tool that is used by millions of people to look for blogs.

With regard to the “Me” person – the fact that I do not work for GV any more does not make my statement on Africa or anything else for that matter irrelevant as s/he suggests. I take issue with that as whether s/he likes it or not my voice is an important one in the African blogosphere and therefore should not be dismissed in this way. And yes it very much does have to do with Global Voices. Global Voices is not the only avenue for searching out blogs in this world nor does it have the space at this moment to feature all the African blogs. Even if it should build a huge aggregator or African blogs this does not mean that the rest of cyber space should be let off the hook in recognising and listing African blogs.

As for people feeling excluded – it is not only via language that people feel excluded! Even then it is only certain languages that will be accommodated and how many of those will be African languages. Or will it just be a case of numbers? When the decisions are being made “Me” please note that there are over 40 million Hausa speakers and about 20 million Yoruba speakers!