At the end, that is what all of us have to think about when we build these applications and business models. As for competition, I think the market is the same. Whether directly or indirectly, we are all competitors although the strength of most of these businesses won’t be in going at it alone but building strategic partnerships. Until these partnerships are in place, we will keep spinning the wheels and not getting anywhere.

As to

Are these aggregators putting politics (pan africanism) before user experience (which would perhaps favour one language one country/region)
and
it seems as if these aggregators are trying to “catch all” users within Africa because there is not sufficient internet users on the continent. Is this the case?

The African approach can work but it can only work in segregation such as it is in allafrica.com
Although their main site aggregates news from the whole continent, they also have a french version and country specific versions. The use of channels to achieve the same feat as is done in afrigator.
Only thing afrigator lacks now is a community thats not biased to vote on the stories

1- Moroccan blogs aggregator : http://www.maroc-blogs.com/
2- African blogging platform : http://www.akopo.com
3- Moroccan blogging platform: http://www.jwane.com
4- Tunisian aggregator: http://tn-blogs.com/
5- Kind of Youtube, Flikr for Cameroon: http://wmedia.cameroon-info.net/mm/cin_list_videos.php

There a many previous initiatives, if you don’t talk about here, it is because of your countries of interest and the langage. I think.

1. The language issue (i.e. English not always being the lingua franca) is something, i foolishly overlooked. I do not think it is a far cry to have a site with two halves a French and an English section. However, this would cause division and fails to promote a sort of pan-africanism that I think underlies these “african wide” news aggregators. A question for forum. Are you trying to promote some sort of pan-africanism.

Because sitting from where I am (UK as a member of the Kenyan diaspora) it seems as if these aggregators are trying to “catch all” users within Africa because there is not sufficient internet users on the continent. Is this the case?

To better explain my point. A European Digg would not work because of language issues. So why are we trying to fudge an African Digg. We have similar language issues. Is it not better to have a SA Digg, Kenya Digg, etc?

Are these aggregators putting politics (pan africanism) before user experience (which would perhaps favour one language one country/region)

Thanks

I like that you are thinking about branching out country specific ports (if i may call it that) of muti and the idea of it being run by people from differet countries makes sense. There is no way it could work otherwise. In the Nigerian Blogosphere for example English is not always the lingua franca and readership is slowly creeping up with the masses but the most interesting blogs are not about technology but about events and journal, they are funny entertaining and educative at times. This catches the attention of the masses. I hurge anyone planning to become a force to reckon with in africa to work on collaborations with entities in the different countries as this is the only way success can be guaranteed