How many of us are actually spending some of our waking hours planning exactly how to bridge the digital divide with ... West Africa's Niger River delta region, for example? So let's cut through some of the "DD" generalities and get down to specific places, communities, and people. Global Voices online is "an international effort to diversify the conversation taking place online by involving speakers from around the world, and developing tools, institutions and relationships to help make these voices heard." GV's 29 March entry features Ethan Zuckerman conversing ('skyping'?) with Sokari Ekine, aka Owukori, author of the blog, “Black Looks - Musings and Rants by an African Fem”. Zuckerman: "It’s easy to get the impression, reading most popular weblogs, that all bloggers are white American males obsessed with technology. If that’s your impression of the blogosphere, you’re reading the wrong blogs."
Zuckerman continues, Sokari Ekine is "a Nigerian feminist, human rights activist and scholar who blogs from her organic farm in ... Spain ... Sokari and I caught up via SkypeIM last week, talking about women’s rights in the Niger delta, the difficulty of convincing activists to blog, and her personal path towards becoming one of Africa’s most prominent and widely cited bloggers. ..."
Sokari's new blog - Afrotecnik "focuses on technologies to bridge digital divides in Africa," and she's published a new paper on her research in the Niger Delta region: “Women’s Responses to State Violence in the Niger Delta”.