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Blogging comes to Africa

Even if there are physical or technical obstacles, there is just no stopping the spread of the www world-wide and blogging following in its wake.

According to this piece in The Independent, blogging has now "arrived" in Africa despite many limitations in giving it full effect:

"Daudi Were, a 28-year-old Kenyan, still reads newspapers. But if he really wants to know what's happening - in African countries where newspapers are state-owned or censored - he turns to the blogs. And he's not alone.

Blogs are taking off across Africa as a new tech-savvy generation takes advantage of growing internet access. The African blogosphere was, until recently, filled by the African diaspora and westerners living in Africa. But native African voices are now being heard.

Kenya, in particular, has seen a large growth in the number of bloggers. The Kenyan Blogs Webring began in 2004 with just 10 sites - now it has more than 430, blogging on everything from politics and business to arts and culture.

"When I first started blogging most of my readership came from outside Kenya," said Mr Were, who runs a blog entitled mentalacrobatics. "However, increasingly we are seeing more and more hits from within Kenya. The Kenyan youth in particular are embracing the internet."

Although internet connections are improving, in many areas they remain poor quality and expensive. East Africa is the only region in the world that is still not connected to the global broadband network. "It makes it difficult to blog regularly," said Ory Okolloh, a young Kenyan blogger. "More importantly it makes it difficult for blogs to be accessible to a wider audience."

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