Global Voices Online

Ethan Zuckerman writes about a new project in West Africa, TradeNet, “TradeNet is designed to take advantage of the boom in mobile phones on the African continent, a boom that’s put mobile phones in the hands of 10% of Africans… an amazing growth over the number of people connected via wired telephony. TradeNet is designed to be an open marketplace for buyers and sellers of agricultural products throughout West Africa. The reason for this is simple: most farmers sell their goods to wholesalers located near to them.”

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.