Memeza (the name is a mashup of the word “meme” + “ZA” for Zambia) is a site that allows people to link to interesting articles about Zambia and then the users vote up the most interesting ones. This is much like Muti does for all of Africa, but on a very country-specific level. It just came to my awareness through Muti (interestingly enough), but there are user’s accounts on it that date back to October 2006.
This is an interesting project for a number of reasons. Primarily, it’s a good proving point to see if content local to a specific African country can catch on and have a significant number of users – enough users to make the content fresh and sticky enough to keep coming back to. Basically, is it a big enough space to have it’s own “fresh web-content” site?
However, there’s a second reason why I’m going to be watching Memeza. I want to see if it moves beyond the tech community and catches on with others. Will it be used mostly by the Zambian diaspora, local wealthy individuals, or the masses?
If anyone knows who put Memeza together, I’d be interested in talking to them.
April 12, 2007 at 6:38 am
I have noticed many country specific digg like sites which I will “digg” for links on later.
I have checked out memeza and what I dont like about it (apart from the fact that its just a pligg installation demo.pligg.com) is the content. Zambian “news” my issue is that a digg like site should refrain from being a news reason being it can never be a substitute for a newspaper website itself. From the look of things memeza is a news aggregator.
Call me pessimistic but a doubt memeza would make it without a community with power to hold it high, And that community can only come in the form of Bloggers not voters.
April 12, 2007 at 4:46 pm
Yet another Digg-clone , just like Joromi.com – which is on Nigerian contents.
These sites lack originality to state the obvious. And the lack differentiating features on these sites put a big question mark on their longevity and overall motive.
April 12, 2007 at 5:05 pm
Good point Imnakoya. I think these would be useful features on a site that already had a large community for a country. For instance, I think that Mashada.com for Kenya could do their own and it might be successful.