Here are a couple of websites created by Africans for the African community. The first two are social networking-type sites, while the third is a personalize homepage.
It’s good to see individuals trying new things for specific niches, and even though some are built using prepackaged solutions. As John from Bwanji mentioned in a comment recently, using prepackaged solutions is the easiest way to get something out the door in a cheap and timely manner. However, it does constrain the product’s roadmap over time.
Bwanji.com is a Zambia’s social networking website. Bwanji is a community site dedicating to connecting Zambians. There looks to be about 3000 users taking part in it. I’d be interested to know what the percentage of users from the diaspora are compared to those within Zambia. On Bwanji there are the normal tools for interaction; a photo album, the ability to gather friends, a blog engine and forums. All in all, it looks like a healthy community and a useful tool.
Akopo, a blogging, chat and games platform, was created by another fellow African blogger: Nino. It was created using the LifeType open source blogging platform, and seems like it has quite a bit of traction (hopefully Nino will fill us in on the numbers). Though most of the blogs seem to be in French, there is an option to create a blog in English as well.
Afrikeo is a dynamic website homepage site, built using the Portaneo Posh tool. The default page comes loaded with African news feeds from Muti and Afrigator, and the BBC. If you’ve used tools like Netvibes or iGoogle before, you’ll recognize an interface that allows you to move modules around, add feeds from your favorite sites and create new pages for additional content.
July 4, 2007 at 11:00 am
Hey Hash,
Thx for the post about Akopo.
We have about 90 blogs now, but last week, we have deleted more than 300 blogs which were not active since 5 months.
Akopo is, like you say, based on Lifetype, an opensource blogging platform. The tool is well developped and developpers in Cameroon were able to easily add plugins we need (even in the backend).
For me, opensource constraints your roadmap only if you wait all from other people. For me, opensource is something you start with, and go further yourself.
Nino
November 15, 2007 at 1:48 pm
It seems like our African brothers and sisters are doing the right thing in hopes to promote technology across the planet. Congratulations to all African website owners.
One site that caught my eyes last week was another African Social Community Site (www.plentyAfricans.com). This site is probably one of Africa’s best social site. It can be compared to myspace, facebook, hi5, and the alike. In fact, when I visited the site, one ofthe members’ profile page reads “I’m glad to be a part of this African Myspace”…. I’ll keep my eyes open to post new African sites to this blog periodly as I find them… Cheers to ALL AFRICANS.
April 23, 2008 at 12:31 pm
I’ve just tried to access Afrikeo and it does not work.
Has it been shut down since your post?
Cheers.
April 23, 2008 at 1:57 pm
@Olivier – I’m not sure what happened with Afrikeo either. They might have taken it offline, it’s been a while since I wrote about them.
July 8, 2008 at 5:10 am
olivier
the new and improved Afrikeo has been built. check it out now. This time around it has been built from scratch as such it will be easily scalable and will grow to become something like news.google.com for african news
keep checking
October 20, 2008 at 3:09 am
My blog has been getting absolutely no hits from Africa. Is there an African blogging community or something?