Interview:

First part:

Second part:

Ansbert Ngurumo, a famous Tanzanian blogger, claimed during the Digital Indaba Citizen (a great workshop held before Highway see http://dci.ru.ac.za) that “Africa’s best stories remain untold because journalists and bloggers have focused on urban areas and neglected rural areas (…) Most of the stories cultural, social and political are in the rural areas. The rural people are isolated because they have no access to technology and may not be able to blog or publish their stories”. Ansbert insisted on the need to “villagise” Internet and source rural content, and emphasise on the social responsability journalists should endorse to liaise with marginalized areas. Future will tell us whether bloggers in Africa accept the challenge to join the “rural informediary troops” and act as efficient broker to enlarge the public

sphere! But definitely, there is a need to cover rural development issues through alternative Media when mainstream print editions keep on focusing (almost exclusively) on urban, middle class and stable income target groups.

Ansbert Ngurumo also explained why he started to blog in Kiswahili (www.ngurumo.blogspot.com). I thought first, a bit naively, that his motivation was about identity and I was wrong. In reality, he chose this language for a much more practical reason, not for political activism but simply as this is the one he knows best and in which he’s at ease to write. Another good reason to write in his native language was that he would use his blog as a natural extension for the regular column he has in his Tanzanian newspaper. He could re-use the material he collected but could not publish entirely. It seems quite convenient for journalists to save their work on their blogs that newspapers are not archiving, a unique tool to retrieve and secure material.
Ansbert also mentioned for those who were arguing about “market” that 100 millions people are conversant in Kis and there was potentially no shortage of readers.

The quote comes from the Open source, the daily paper of HA, Rebecca Wanjiki (HANA)

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