Global Voices Online

Jikomboe (Swahili) on the New York Times article about African Languages Wikipedias: “How do you create an online encyclopedia when few native speakers have access to the Internet? What use is an encyclopedia when literacy rates among a language’s speakers can approach zero? (This is not a problem for Swahili.) And who should control the content of an encyclopedia in a local language if not enough native speakers are moved, or able, to contribute?”

Posted by Ndesanjo Macha

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Recent Links also in Sub-Saharan Africa

Can eating leeks help your singing voice? Intrigued? well The Ethical co-op blog ponders this, the need to flouridate water, eggs and a new net-metering law in South Africa.

A week after the 10 hostages (including 8 foreign nationals) kidnapped by the Bakassi Freedom Fighters were exchanged for the release of 13 prisoners, Cameroonian blogger Le blog du Prési wonders what a hostage is worth. ”I don't mean ‘what does a hostage cost?'”, he writes. “Even though these would be the worst criminals, are their lives so futile that they can be exchanged for those of other human beings? At the very least, on this path, Cameroon is redefining the rule of clemency, liberating prisoners under duress, and at the same time exposing the victims of these prisoners to their terrorizers.”

From the Kabissa Newletter, a project is profiled: The organization aims to plant trees in thirteen Village communities of Ngoketunjia Division, as a means to fight climate change in Cameroon and the world at large.