Muti is developed by a South African (Neville Newey) who resides in the US. He developed it as a platform for Africans to highlight news and stories around Africa that would be of interest to other Africans. I have noticed that it is primarily being used by South Africans and want to make sure everyone knows that this is a continent-wide platform.

I talked with Neville about this at some length, since I wanted to be sure that I had the creators vision in mind when writing this. If you don’t want to read the rest, here is my message: non-South Africans need to start using Muti in order for it to reach its full potential.

The first problem: the domain
Muti is found at http://muti.co.za – a South African domain. Thus, news articles written and bloggers live under the general assumption that it was made primarily for just South Africans. Unfortunately, Muti.com was not available, and Neville took the closest he could get. (The sellers want some astronomical figure for the domain, that for a free service run by one guy in his spare time, cannot be afforded)

The second problem: South Africans are more active
I’m in contact with many bloggers around Africa each week. By and large, the most active blogging comes out of South Africa. I’d like to see a rundown of all blogs by country in Africa to make sure I’m right, but I wouldn’t be surprised if 20%+ are from South Africa. It makes sense that there are more South African stories on Muti – it’s not a knock on them at all, I’m glad to see everyone taking part.

What I don’t understand, and what I hope will change, is that there are many many outstanding African bloggers that don’t take part in this free platform. There is nothing stopping them from submitting news stories and blogs from their own countries.

The Challenge
If you write a blog about Africa, or you read a news article or blog post about something interesting in Africa, post it to Muti. Share it with everyone else. Don’t standby and let one demographic take ownership of a platform that belongs to all of Africa.

Finally, I know that there are a few South Africans and non-South Africans who do post to Muti, so please understand that I’m generalizing in order to make a point.

Vincent Maher and the M&G team are at it again – Vincent has brought a level of innovation to that team that is absolutely refreshing in just the 2 short months that he has been there. They’ve just launched their new “The News in Photos“, and it looks really really good. Hat tip goes out to their designer, since a dark page is more difficult to pull off than a light one.

So, this is new and they’ve not yet released the news to their full audience. Vincent and the M&G team would like to get YOUR feedback on the service. Give it a look and tell them what you like/don’t like about it. This is a great way to launch a new product and get valuable feedback.

Features that I like:

• Tag Cloud for filtering images
• It loads FAST!
• Photo swarm – this is just cool. Vincent tells me that what you’re seeing is what everyone else who is on the website is viewing also in real time. So, the more who are on, the more images and swarms you’ll see.
• Popular photos by “week” and “today”
• Photo Widget for your blog – smart, just smart

What I would like to see:

• Under the “more galleries” it would be nice to have the name of that gallery since I can’t always tell by the picture
• I want to be able to customize at least some of the colors of the widget – maybe width too

Keep in mind that this has just been released and is in Beta. There will be a lot of changes, especially with user feedback. Read more on Vincent’s blog.

I’ve been eagerly awaiting Harry Karanja’s third installment of his story on setting up an internet cafe in rural Kenya. He writes about it at his blog Startups in Kenya. This is one of the reasons I get so charged up about blogging in Africa. It accelerates the learning curve for so many others.

Read each of these blog posts to see why mobile is going to be (already?) HUGE in Africa. A fascinating story.

Part 1: Internet in the Village

My friend then threw down the gauntlet. “Hey Harry, you claim you’re an entrepreneur and a techie, why not setup the internet infrastructure in Njoro?” I started to protest but then held off as I thought about it. Could it really be done? What were the challenges? How would I approach it?

Part 2: Laying the Groundwork for a Rural Cyber

Before I could commit to the project (and the money) I had to make sure that I could get internet to the cyber quickly and inexpensively. I went shopping for an ISP in Nakuru and what I found was mostly disappointing.

Part 3… Still waiting! Come on Harry, tell us some more.