Submitted by Tobias Eigen on 7 March, 2008 - 18:04
Only South Africa, Egypt and Senegal appear in a map on Reseaux sociaux: des audiences differentes selon les continents (Social Networks: different audiences by continent). I can't tell where the data comes from, but it is interesting to see the various sites being used around the world. Egypt and South Africa appear to have gone the way of Facebook which I also use, while Senegal approves the same social network as the French. It's called Skyblog (google searches send me to Skyrock.com).
Comments
I appreciate the comment.
I just looked at the map again and see that it's from last summer - so I gather the preferences in various countries has changed again since then. I recall that last fall facebook.com picked up in the United States and think it might have surpassed myspace.com now - though perhaps in the young crowd myspace.com is still very relevant.
Another thing that I would be curious to hear from an expert on is whether any statistics like this from Africa (besides countries like South Africa and Egypt) are actually reliable. Typically they depend on internet traffic statistics, which inaccurately show African visitors because of the ways they are connected via VSAT etc.
Obviously this map is useless for Africa because it shows no usage at all except for Egypt, Senegal and South Africa - I was being provocative in my post title. Africans *are* using social networking sites. Our task at Kabissa is to encourage Africans working in civil society to use them more and to use them in support of the missions of their organizations.
Cheers,
Tobias
I think Africans are using Social Networks but largely in the Diaspora but on country, regional and continental issues. Sites such as Nigeria Village Square is very popular with a lot of content. Also African Path and African Loft. It would be interesting to know the breakdown of contributors between those in Africa and those in the Diaspora. With NVS many contributors are in Nigeria.
At African Path we have a very active NING space with members from across the continent and the Diaspora. Ning is so simple to create and to use and because it is a template you can be part of many groups with the same password etc and the layout is the same. Why create a stand alone African facebook equivalent when you can have a Ning network in minutes. Having said that I have loads of friends in Africa on my FB profile!
Sokari Ekine
Community Coordinator - Kabissa
"I think therefore I ask questions"
Personal Blog: www.blacklooks.org
Thanks, 1African! You are right that there are plenty of African social networking sites.
But I sometimes think there are too many that are trying to do the same thing, spreading us out and creating more "silos" or islands of people instead of bringing us together as the technology gives us the opportunity to do. 
I am also particularly interested in the sites that go beyond dating or social networking for personal social purposes to promote social change, and encourage and support people involved in civil society organizations.  I am hoping Kabissa will contribute to that, and join other great African social networking sites like AfricanPath, Muti and Afrigator. 
Wouldn't it be cool if, through the power of social networking, African civil society could reach a tipping point: "the levels at which the momentum for change becomes unstoppable". 
Africans all over the world both in Africa and in Diaspora are also now using social networks such as Face book, MySpace, Twitter and tansali (www.tansali.com -dedicated African Social Network) etc to share all manner of information to include Video and Photographic content, to keep in touch, to be kept up to date on politics, entertainment news and gossip
Recently a campaign to provide constant electricity supply in Nigeria (which seems to have eluded Nigeria since its independence) called Light up Nigeria was started on twitter and lunched on tansali which is a clear example of social networking sites serving the purpose of uniting a community or an ethnic group etc irrespective of geographic physical location in pursuing an objective
As the cost of bandwidth becomes cheaper and internet access more readily available across Africa as a whole, Social Networks especially ones such as tansali focused on providing specific content and services for specific groups will become even more popular and in demand.
Hi Humphrey -
Thanks for posting your comment. Can you tell us more about why you think iborian.com is a great social networking site that can be the "tipping point"?
Thanks,
Tobias
Hello, I'm posting this message to let you know that there is a brand new African social network out there (many thousands users already). For now it is mostly Nigerian but it aims to be pan-african. www.asanja.com ia an African social network created by Africans for Africans. I invite to check it out and let me know your thoughts.
Thanks for sharing - this looks like an interesting addition to the constellation of social networks rising out of Africa, though it's not possible to see what it's for without logging in. if you'd like to write a review of asanja.com on Kabissa you are welcome to do so.
I would be interested in finding out what the new state is of social networking in Africa since this post was written. In my view, circumstances have changed - especially with the advent of twitter and facebook, which are now being used very actively in Africa.
Cheers,
Tobias
Hi everyone,
I not only have released a social network website but coded it entirely by myself...., I believe in cutting down on the bloat other social networking websites like facebook cause. I have been going through a couple of african websites(keywords "africa social networking" on google ) and have noticed many are pre-made CMS, made by Americans etc, defeating the purpose of a truly african site. Others dnt offer enuff security...eg exposing member videos etc in effort to get less bounce rate.
This was the reason i created http://www.veepiz.com to overcome this.....its just 2mnths old but is getting lots of hits eg weve reached over 640,000hits in just 1.5mnths..and over 1k African members......
I think a many Africans are now using social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. However, I don't the number is bigger in comparison to the West where the internet is readily available. However, one thing which must be noted is that social networking sites like Facebook and Myspace are mainly used by English speaking countries such as the the USA and the UK. Non-speaking countries such as Japan, China, and France have their own social networks.
Now, in Africa, we some site calls themselves as African social social networks. But I believe, it is difficult if not impossible to have an African social network. In Africa, we have many different languages, and unless the so called African social networks will have the ability to translate their networks to these languages, then I can't see them working.
Another thing is that social networks are being moved from being global to niche markets. It would be better to create a social network for a particular African country than the whole of African continent. That is what is being done in other parts of the world. In Africa, the only promising social network which appears to go niche is www.bongoline.com. This is a Tanzanian social network dedicated to Tanzanians. The good thing about this site is that is it can be accessed both in English and swahili. This is a good strategy bearing in mind that Swahili is the mostly language used in Tanzania. I believe that other sites should follow this path. Instead of creating a social network pretending to be an African social network, why don't you dedicate it to your own country first. May be people should read how Facebook statrted just to get an idea.
Very interesting question. Just to add to this conversation - hopefully we can put together a map of use of social networks at least in West Africa once we have completed the latest survey that WiserEarth and Kabissa are running jointly.
Participez à l'étude WiserEarth/Kabissa sur les outils de communications et collaborations en Afrique de l'Ouest en cliquant ici
Contribute to the survey WiserEarth/Kabissa on online communications and collaborations tools in West Africa, click here
I stumbled on a new and innovative site that seems to have some synergies with Kabissa. It almost like Facebook but with strong goals and purpose.The goals of the site is to :
Visit the site to discovered it I'm sure you'll all be pleasantly surprised.
Website: Star 53
Hi Kate,
Thanks for sharing this link to the Star 53 social networking site for Africa. This seems to be the "thread that never dies" on Kabissa.. I posted it originally in 2008, back when we launched the first version of the Kabissa community site and it wasn't yet clear that Africans were using social media. Now the situation has of course changed and there is widespread use in particular of Facebook.
It would be interesting to compare this lemonde social media map from 2008 with more current data - anybody game?
I like the idea behind Star 53, especially the "Why register" points on the Star 53 signup form that could also apply to anyone wanting to join Kabissa or any number of other Pan African social networks - or indeed even Facebook or LinkedIn:
I do think that it's time to move beyond the "one social network to rule them all" idea and for all of us who are providing platforms like this to see ourselves as part of a constellation of platforms - so not a single star for the 53 African countries but dozens or hundreds of stars that are all collaborating to achieve a common goal.
If we all position our networks as "the" African network then we will just have lots of separate communities (silos) set up by Ghanaians, Nigerians, Kenyans, etc that won't talk to each other and it will be a big challenge for Africans to effectively participate in them all. Against this, Facebook has a real appeal to the NGO that only has occasional access to the Internet and needs to be able to quickly take care of business.
This is the idea behind Kabissa Connections, which I am hoping will contribute to building the infrastructure that will enable us all to help Africans (especially civil society organizations) to build up a "web of trust" online (term borrowed from betterplace.org) and as a result make more effective use of the Internet and our many social networks to find partners and get their work done.
I would welcome your feedback on the initial project idea which won the Netsquared Challenge and you can read here: http://netsquared.org/projects/kabissa-connections
Warm regards,
Tobias
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