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WhiteAfrican

Where Africa and Technology Collide!

30 Great African Tech Blogs

A conversation on Twitter with Marshall Kirkpatrick of RWW about the top tech blogs to read in Africa made me realize that there is no great list to start from. Most of us just have them in our head, RSS feeds or blogrolls. Some of them don’t update frequently enough, and many of the range across topics, but all of them are useful if you are trying to figure out what is going on in technology around Africa.

Here is a list of African tech blogs that I follow. Hopefully it can be a resource, and a good place for everyone to start from when exploring the mobile, web and general tech space in Africa:

General Web and African Tech

AfriGadget – Stories of low-tech African ingenuity and innovation
Afromusing – Juliana’s insights and thoughts on alternative energy in Africa
Appfrica – Pan-African and Ugandan web and mobile tech developments
Bandwidth Blog – Charl Norman’s blog in South Africa
Bankelele – One of East Africa’s top business bloggers, also has great insights into the business side of African technology
Build Africa – Matt’s musings on technology in Africa
Charl van Niekerk – Always insightful post from one of South Africa’s great coders
Coda.co.za – One of Africa’s very best web designers
Dewberry – Shaun’s frenetic blog on general, and South African tech
My Hearts in Accra – More of generalist these days, but excellent analysis of African tech space by Ethan Zuckerman
Henry Addo – A perspective on tech from Henry in Ghana
Geek Rebel – Henk’s blog on entrepreneurship and technology
Matthew Buckland – From one of the pioneers, and big thinkers, in the South African media space
Mike Stopforth – Entrepreneur and South African social media nexus point
Nubian Cheetah – Thoughts and news on West African tech
Oluniyi David Ajao – Web coverage from Ghana
Open Source Africa – Just what the name describes… talking about open source development in Africa
Paul in Sierra Leone – hardware tech news from a very hard place to get news/info from
Startup Africa – Tracking mostly South African web startups
Startups Nigeria – Just what the title says
Stii – One of my favorite true coder blogs out of South Africa
Timbuktu Chronicles – A must-read covering pan-African technology, from web to mobile to hardware
Bits/Bytes – Coding thoughts by the unique and always hilarious “M” from Thinker’s Room.
Vincent Maher – Vincent’s excellent, fun and controversial blog on all things South African tech
Web Addict(s) – From the mind of Rafiq, opinionated coverage and thoughts on South African tech

African Mobile-focused Blogs

Epic Mobile – mobile phone tips and tricks from South Africa
Jopsa.org – (aka Mobiles in Malawi), thoughts by Josh Nesbit in Malawi
Kiwanja – Ken Banks on mobile usage and his FrontlineSMS app, much of it in Africa
Mobile Africa – A great resource for mobile news across Africa
Mobility Nigeria – track what’s happening in the Nigerian mobile phone space
Fring – the only tool/app on this list

5 Non-blog Tech Sites and Tools for Africa

Afrigator – the defacto blog tracking tool for African blogs
Amatomu – the South African blogosphere tracker
Mobile Active – Katrin does a good job of finding reports and stories about mobiles in Africa
Muti – mostly South African tech news and gossip, a reddit/digg for interesting African news/blog links
Videoreporter.nl – Ruud’s videos consistently have great tech stories
Akouaba – A French language blog tracker for West Africa

The, “If I missed it”…

I likely missed many blogs that should be on this list. Please add them to the comments below. I know I’ve missed quite a few Francophone and Arabic ones, so PLEASE add those especially.

Additions (aka, ones I missed):

Many Possibilities – Steve Song on open source in Africa
Africa 2.0 – A French language blog talking about all things new media in Africa
Subsaharska – Miquel, building a blogging tool for Africa (Maneno)
Arthur Devriendt – French blog on web tech in Africa

41 Comments

  1. Thanks for the mention Erik, though we all aspire to the kind of work you’re doing here!

  2. OPML, please!!! j/k Nice list, Eric!

  3. Well, you have set the bar high, my friend. I’ll have to work to focus on more tech-related items in Subsaharska and focus more on web development as that’s what I do. I’ve been finding a really wild array of web folks on the continent. They’re not your typical 20 somethings with glasses and hoodies that you find in San Francisco. Definitely a more DIY, nuts and bolts crowd who are making practical sites instead of just something for Google to buy up. Probably an article unto itself now that I think about it… I’d love to know of more African web developers out there if any of you feels like dropping a line.

    Welcome back from TED by the way, Erik. Hope you’ve got everything organized mentally by now 🙂

    -miquel

  4. Breaks my heart to see that my blog isn’t here 🙁

    Hehe, well done to everyone though!

  5. Erik thanks for the link!

    I’d also recommend including PRI the World’s Tech Podcast by Clark Boyd
    While this doesn’t focus on Africa directly, he does give a lot of focus on technology that relates to Africa. Recent podcasts have covered topics like OpenMRS, Inveneo, Telemedicine in Ghana, etc.

  6. in the Francophone network we also have :
    http://africa2point0.com/ a very active blog based in western Africa about everything web 2.0, tech entrepreneurship, citizen media,etc. .
    http://arthurdevriendt.net/ is based in France has interesting insights on African technology and blogosphere
    and more on their blogrolls

  7. I see you also joined the top XYZ African blogs bandwagon. Thanks for the mention and keep up the good work. 😉

  8. I like your list, the blogs listed are people really delivering value to the South African blogosphere, people that really know their stuff.

    Very nice compilation.

  9. Thanks for the honour, but I’m so low tech (just a bit of HTML, and stuck on blogger). Still I find the Nairobi tech scene so fascinating with great people, events (skunkworks) and ideas .

  10. Cool list, will be a great resource if you keep it updated:)

  11. I think Matthew Buckland’s blog deserves a place here: http://www.matthewbuckland.com/
    It won best business blog at the South African Blog Awards last year, but is mainly about web and mobile tech business. One of my favourite reads.

  12. Dave, you’re right. The truth is there are many excellent SA tech blogs, and I had to make some hard decisions because I was trying to get a list of blogs across Africa that cover technology. Yours should be up there too, quite frankly.

  13. Thanks for the mention Erik.

  14. I’m flabbergasted! Thanx Erik, it is such an honour!

  15. Hey dude, thanx for the great post.
    Thanx also for mentioning the fring blog.

    If you have any feedback on how we can improve the fring blog please send it my way, so we can improve.. Thanx

  16. Asante sana Erik both for the ref and for some very cool new people to follow.

  17. I’m wowed that Startups Nigeria is on your list, Erik. Thanks!

  18. Do you know some blogs about domaining in Africa?

    Thanks

  19. yout forgot too this afrigator’s french clone : http://www.akouaba.com/

  20. @Hash
    Merci de m’avoir cité sur cette liste.

    Thanks for the mention.

  21. Hi
    http://www.kenweb.net/ is a new blog about web designing and web development.

  22. I appreciate the mention so much

  23. Did it strike anyone other than me that this list mirrors their own RSS list? I’m kinda shocked that Erik’s “general ICT and Africa” group has an 80% overlap with my reading list and my other 20% are more Africa than ICT.

    Great minds thinking alike, lucky coincidence, or a dearth of online voices for a continent of millions?

  24. Oh and and odd discovery: is Henry Addo at http://addhen.org/wblog/ or http://www.addhen.org/blog/ ? Seems the latter (or that’s the feed I subscribe to).

  25. Well, I guess that answers the age-old question of how what topic to write about in order to generate the most comments without stooping to national politics 😉

  26. @Wayan – unfortunately, this list represents a sad truth: there aren’t nearly enough technology bloggers around Africa. We need more country-specific tech blogs. You see them in places like Nigeria, South Africa and Kenya, but where are the ones from Chad, Botswana and Zambia?

    On a good note, I can tell you it is growing, though slowly. 4 years ago there were truly only a dozen across the whole continent, and that includes South Africa (which tends to have the most tech pundits). So, let’s encourage continued growth, sew the seeds in the minds of those we meet.

  27. Hey Erik,

    Hope we can cross paths, one of these days. Thanks for the mention – it means a lot. Following your and @kiwanja’s footsteps, I just posted re: blogging about Africa: http://tinyurl.com/cbnh4h

    Thanks again,
    Josh

  28. Erik,

    Thanks for the mention. BTW – My blog on the whole, is all about African sustainability; in technology, venture capital, business, and social entrepreneurship.

  29. @HASH – You’re right about the fact that we need more country-focused tech blogs. That way, we can read about tech better all around Africa.

    That’s one of the reasons I started Startups Nigeria;-)

  30. Pen 2 Net (www.pen2net.com) is a Blogging tool for Africa. hose still in its premature stage, it gives out FREE DOMAIN NAMES FOR LIFE to any African blogger who creates a blog there, or any Africa related blog created in the system. It has a goal of hosting and sponsoring 1000 African blogs by Dec 31, 2009. Three bloggers have signed up already and are now enjoying free full domain names.

  31. Mostly that’ s because most people don’ t realize how many skills they do have. If you have office skills, for example, you may be able to find work as a virtual assistant. If you have transportation you might try mystery shopping , although it can.

  32. Well thanks for the list. I guess theres a lot of work to do in my south africa cape blog.

  33. Thanks for putting up this list. Just showed it at the Tokyo Barcamp while I was talking about tech scene in Africa,

  34. I think it’s quite a comprehensive list, I have come accross some of the blogs mentioned and I am impressed

  35. Very helpful list. Without some of these blogs stories such as that of William Kambkwamba (the boy who harnessed power using Windmills) would have probably not been brought to the fore. Sites like http://www.myweku.com/
    will join in unearthing some of the very best talent on our continent.

  36. On the subject of kidnappings, we were discussing a specific category for children with Ory and Eric, and will continue discussing this. For now, I think Kidnappings falls under Civilians and one thing users could do is to consider starting their posting with a key word like Child Kidnapping which will help make the posts stand out.- Anne-christine d’Adesky,

  37. Wow, what a list, I guess it needs some weeding now, with so many new African technology sites…Top resource! Thanks

  38. You need to do an updated article on this! Startups Nigeria is now Techloy and there are a few other good blogs down here. I open up Techcrunch and Techloy everyday

  39. Lovely list…

    Missed TechLoy.com (IT)
    and igbopeople.blogspot.com (Non-IT)

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