I’ve taken a (too long) hiatus from writing for Global Voices, but the flood of responses to Invisible Children’s new Kony 2012 film has me back:

A film aimed at making Joseph Kony—a Ugandan guerilla leader currently wanted by International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity—”famous” in order to raise support for his arrest has swept the Internet by storm, pushing #StopKony onto Twitter’s trending topics list and prompting a wave of backlash from bloggers who worry the film and its associated campaign are overly simplistic.

Read the full post »

The post features quotes from Rosebell Kagumire, Solome Lemma, Muse Okwonga, Angelo Izama, Siena Antsis, Julian Mwine, Teddy Ruge, Ernest Bazanye, and a few others.

I’m still mulling over my own response to the film; hoping to post something in the next day or two. In the meantime, please do yourself a favor and check out two essential pieces of reading:

• Wronging Rights, The Definitive ‘Kony 2012′ Drinking Game
• Ethan Zuckerman, Unpacking Kony 2012

Posted in afrobloggers, conflict, digital activism, global voices, ICC, northern uganda, u.s. foreign policy, uganda | 1 Comment

My next post is up at Global Voices Online:

The arrival of an undersea cable that will increase bandwidth and lower Internet access costs throughout Africa has sparked debate and interest in the African blogoshere. Seacom, which links South Africa, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and Mozambique to Europe and Asia, went live on Thursday, connecting eastern and southern Africa to the global broadband network.

Johannesburg, Nairobi and Kampala received their connections on Thursday, and Addis Ababa and Kigali are expected to follow. The cable’s arrival was originally scheduled for early July, but pirate attacks off the coast of Somalia delayed operations.

Read more »

Lots of bloggers in this one: IT Blog Kenya, In an African Minute, TechMasai, NaijaBlog, Kachwanya, True Kenyan, Issa Michuzi [SW], and Jellyfish, plus Twitter-ers ncallegari, dnyaga, mentalacrobatic and akianastasiou.

Posted in africa, afrobloggers, global voices, ICT, kenya, south africa, tanzania, technology, uganda | Leave a comment

So much for the Ugandan Best of Blogs Awards. The blogren have jumped ship to the Honest Scrap Award, an informal, apparently international bloggers’ honor-slash-meme that’s been making the rounds in East Africa.

As far as I can tell, the award entered the Ugandan blogosphere through Ugandan Girl, who got it from Afronuts in Nigeria. Ugandan Girl passed it to Eizzy, Nevender, Mjay, SilverBow, among others.

Since then it’s hit up Emi, Normzo, Jny, Samali, Carsozy, Yz and Wilde Yearnings, plus a bunch more, including Biche at Chick About Town.

Earlier this month, she passed it along to me.

I’m flattered, but I’ll resist the immense urge to make a gratuitous, Sally Field-esque acceptance speech. Instead I’ll just show you hers:

You like me! Right now…you like me!

The award stipulates that I:

1. Brag about the award.
2. Include the name of the blogger who bestowed the award on me and link back to the blogger.
3. Choose a minimum of seven (7) blogs that I find brilliant in content or design.
4. Show their names and links and leave a comment informing them that they were prized with Honest Weblog.
5. List at least ten (10) honest things about myself.

To be honest, several of my top choices have been awarded already. I don’t know if it’s legal or not to re-award them, but I’m going to do it anyway. In no particular order, the seven East African bloggers whose blogs’ content or design I find brilliant:

1. Rev/Comrade at The Dying Communist, for constantly provoking me. Samali already named him, but I’m hoping the additional mention will put even more pressure on him to start blogging again.
2. Angela Kintu, for constant thoughtful analysis.
3. Rosebell, for bringing important things to my attention.
   Rosebell’s acceptance post
4. SebaSpace at AfroGay, for persistence in the face of disheartening adversity.
5. Tamaku at Diary of a gay Kenyan (he’s already accepted the award once), for courage and wit.
6. Tumwi at Ugandan Insomniac, for unique insight and wry humor.
7. Naughty Feeling at Queeattitude, for a recent post that broke my heart.

And for my ten honest things:

1. I despise eggplant.
2. I can’t whistle.
3. I like cupcakes in theory, but not in practice.
4. A two-week trip to Uganda in January 2006 saved me from a year in Vladivostok and five to seven years’ worth of studying 19th century Russian literature.
5. Most of the things I “overhear” on Twitter are pulled from conversations I’ve had.
6. I desperately need to move my blog to WordPress.
7. But I’m resisting because I don’t want to give up the ability to obsessively tweak my design through Blogger.
8. I’m three degrees from Joseph Kony, two degrees from Wernher von Braun and one degree from Mikhail Gorbachev.
9. I have a thing for giant storks.
10. I claim to hate memes, but this is the third time I’ve participated in one on Jackfruity (here are the first and second).

Posted in afrobloggers, best of blogs, ugandan blogosphere | 10 Comments