Cybersurf

Hello – how do you do, and welcome to Cybersurf, a weekly look at what is happening on the internet. I am your Cyberhost, Steven Lang.

Just in case you did not know, this week is Geography Awareness Week, with the international focus being on Africa.

And so this is a good opportunity to look at some web sites that provide excellent material on our continent.

Let’s start with the Smithsonian Natural history web site that has a special section called African voices. Right on the front page there is a quote from Jomo Kenyatta, the first president of Kenya who said in 1966 that “People, like words, are enduring.”

You can find the African Voices site at www.mnh.si.edu/africanvoices.

It is very colourful and has beautiful graphics linked to the exhibition in Washington, but even if you can’t get there, you can still enjoy a fantastic learning adventure navigating though the site.

The African Voices ironically provide a great visual experience, but there are not only pretty pictures there is plenty of substance under themes such as “wealth in Africa” – “Market Crossroads” “working in Africa” and others.

The only drawbacks – well because of the rich graphics, the site is not the fastest and secondly, because it is designed for people outside Africa, one has the feeling that it is a site about Africa, but not OF Africa.

Our next site is the one set up for the Pan African Parliament which is currently in session just outside Johannesburg.

The PAP site can be found at pan hyphen African hyphen parliament dot org. That’s a little complicated so let me repeat that one - pan hyphen African hyphen parliament dot org.

It is a well designed site – navigation is intuitive; the look and feel are easy on the eye, and it downloaded quickly – and if you can sense a but coming up …. Here it is.

One of the stated aims of the PAP is to give all Africans access to the decision making forum, and a web site could be a good way of broadening this access. Unfortunately it does not achieve that, there are no web casts and no updates of what is happening this week.

One of the best sites about Africa can be found at the My Wonderful World Blog – here’s the address – mywonderfulworld dot typepad dot com – that is mywonderfulworld – dot typepad dot com

Again it is a foreign viewpoint of Africa but it has very good content and excellent links to other sites that carry African related material. So for example there is a link to the African Music Encyclopedia another one to African Songs, Chants, and Games.

Much of the material in mywonderfulworld has an educational bent including the quiz to test your Africa IQ on Google Earth.

These are only a few of the best sites about Africa, but I am sure that you will have noticed that most of them are set up outside our continent. It is time for Africans to produce the definitive site about Africa.

But until then, check out the Cybersurf blog for links to some of the most interesting sites about Africa.

You will find the Cybersurf Blog at Cybersurf dot blogspot dot com – one more time – Cybersurf dot blogspot dot com.

Before we sign off, let us thank the news research unti of SABC news for assistance on this program.

And please join me again next Wednesday for more on the best of the web.

Examples of websites publishing lists of Africa online resources and/or Africa content:

- http://mywonderfulworld.typepad.com/

- http://www9.nationalgeographic.com/mywonderfulworld/docs/gaw.html

- http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/africa/features/storyofafrica/index.shtml

- http://www.pbs.org/wnet/africa/explore/index.html

- http://www.mnh.si.edu/africanvoices/

- http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/AfricaFocus/