Changing, Exchanging and Transforming African Creativity on the Web

The digital revolution has caught up fast in the world of African creativity! Over the last ten years, the increase in African Internet users has been 16 times greater than that of North American users. Alongside this, a growing number of African organisations and cultural operators are creating and participating in websites and social networks, offering an ever-increasing range of resources to allow people to keep up-to-date with African creativity, enjoy African art and contact African creators. Examples of this can be seen in various fields, but the philosophy is always the same: that of sharing content, involving users and facilitating participation and access.

An example in the field of music is www.africanhiphop.com, a website set up by the African Hip Hop Foundation,  non-profit and registered in Holland whose board of directors are African hip hop pioneers from South Africa, Uganda and Holland. They have been collecting information on hip hop in Africa since the early 1990s and, through the work of volunteers, have been sharing news, songs and video clips, as well as in-depth analyses of various national music scenes. On this site it is also possible to participate in forums on African music in English, French and Kiswahili.

Maker Faire Africa is a fair of technical prototypes and design products which has been taking place in Nairobi since 2009 and which features an online catalogue of participants. In a very accessible way, through http://matchamaker.info, users can learn about the artists participating in the fair, watch videos on their products, and read about their “next steps” – what they need to do to develop their ideas. Cyrus Kabiru from Nairobi, for example, creates glasses out of recycled objects, which are displayed online. As his “next step” he is looking for “a mentor or coach to develop a business plan”.

Badilisha Poetry X-Change is an online platform showcasing poetry from Africa and the Diaspora. The project was launched in 2009 by the Cape Town-based non-profit Africa Centre, and calls on Pan-African poets to participate in the creation of a comprehensive and internationally accessible poetry archive. The project takes its name from the kiSwahili expression “Badilisha”, meaning “to change, exchange or transform”. On this platform, users can read short profiles on poets ranging from internationally renowned names such as Antjie Krog from South Africa to newly emerging poets such as Muhammad Muwakil from Trinidad and Tobago, as well as reading their poems and listening to podcasts of their recital.

But, although the African cultural presence on the web is increasing, it is still under-represented. It is this fact that led to the establishment of the WikiAfrica project, which aims for the “Africanisation” of Wikipedia, the most important online source of freely accessible information. The project was set up by the Lettera 27 Foundation and aims to expand the amount of information on Africa available on Wikipedia, particularly relating to biographies, literature, art, magazines and African migration routes. In collaboration with various archives, magazines and cultural institutions, WikiAfrica aims to produce 30,000 Wikipedia articles over the next two years, and calls on users to edit and translate existing articles as well as creating new African articles.

Sandra Federici