Sokari Ekine
18 December 2008
opinion
Sokari Ekine reviews the following blogs:
Théophile Kouamouo
Rombo
AfroMusing
Mootbox
Blacklooks
Glory O Nigeria
In a fitting end to 2008, Ivorian blogger Théophile Kouamouo created a Meme on "Why I blog about Africa". He asks
"Do we blog for the diaspora and for the world at large, cut off from our contemporary on the continent? Is blogging about Africa done in the same way as blogging about Europe or Asia? Does the African-oriented blogosphere have something specific to offer to the world version 2.0?"
And responds to his own question
"I blog about Africa with joy because I believe that it is from our individual and mixed voices that the African renaissance will sprout, which will come as surely as Martin Luther King's dream became a reality forty years later. I read African-oriented blogs with joy because they give me a less monolithic and less doomed image of the continent and its inhabitants."
Other bloggers who have taken up the Meme are Rombo of What an African Woman Wants
"Africa is under my skin. Africa is the voices in my head. Africa is the itch on my back that I can't quite reach.. Africa is my "I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me." She's all over me like wet on water. She's beautiful and she's strong and she's got so much to give, she inspires me and I love her truly madly deeply. She's battered and bruised and sometimes broken and I love her even more. She's always on my mind and in my heart. It's not so much, then, that I choose to blog about Africa. It's that I can't not.
AfroMusing and Mootbox
"I do not blog for hungry kids or to broker peace between warring factions. My blog does not influence which African child will receive an OLPC and one that will not. Blogging about Africa is therapy for me. I have an immense interest in the development on the continent, which most likely was awakened by the trips with my father as he criss-crossed the continent in search of the next deal."
Blacklooks blogs describes Africa as a "contrary friend who despite her faults cannot help loving her....
"I love the way she moves, her facial expressions, the taste of her food and the smell and colours of the earth but most of all I write about her because I so much want her to be OK to be right to prosper and to be in control of herself and to be confident enough to love herself!"
Glory O Nigeria
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