In Kenya, a New Media Generation
April 26, 2010
Users at a Kenyan internet cafe. In Kenya, high-speed internet has sped the rise of a generation of networked youth.
Flickr/Giorgio Montersino
While many in Kenya still lack access to electricity, a vibrant blogging and social networking scene is emerging from Nairobi. According to Daudi Were, a digital media specialist and longtime blogger speaking at the 1stPan Africa Media Conference held in Nairobi last month, there are over 800 individual Kenyan blogs, and the number is growing every day. And with 73% of the Kenyan population under the age of 30, the percentage of those connected to the Internet and active in new online social networks promises to grow.
Now, with the landing of two new fiber-optic cables to this side of the continent last year, and a third arriving before the end of April, many African nations are poised to partake in faster internet service. With that comes the opportunity to use free social media tools, to share their thoughts and establish online communities. Many are using this medium as a place to raise issues about electoral democracy and press freedom, becoming citizen journalists in a movement to raise the voices and hear the opinions of those you don’t see in the newspapers every day.
Bloggers were among the first to raise concerns about the vote-counting process in the 2007 Presidential election. Citizens questioned whether they could get the straight story from traditional media, so they took to the streets. And when the chaos hit, blogs were a crucial tool for reporting what was happening on the ground both locally and globally.
While the most advanced economies are struggling with the balance between traditional and new media, the bloggers, journalists, and new media experts at the Pan Africa Media Conference seem to have a true appreciation for these two realms and believe they should play a complementary role.
“Bloggers can be faster, but we know traditional news. We are all in the story-telling business, just from different perspectives,” said Were.
See also: KenyaUnlimited, a Kenyan blog aggregator that features content from across the nation’s growing blogosphere.
