Just how large is the African Blogosphere?
There is a question that has been bouncing in my head for some time now. Its become pretty obvious that blogging in Africa has gone mainstream with lots of activity on a whole range of different topics and issues. However, just how big is blogging in Africa? As in, how large is the African blogosphere? I set out online recently to try and find resources that may have the answer to this question.
The problem with the Internet when it comes to Africa is that there is the issue of limited local content. This, taken a step further, is also compounded by the lack of directories or search engines that comprehensively catalog African web sites and not just blogs in particular. I searched a large number of diverse online resources and was able to establish that only one web site really did a good job of cataloging the African blogosphere, as limited or incomplete as the cataloging may be at this juncture.
When it comes to African blogosphere, the web site that had the most comprehensive listing of African blogs is Afrigator. Afrigator is a social media aggregator and directory built especially for Africans who publish and consume content online. Afrigator indexes African blogs, podcasts, videocasts or other types web sites and markets them globally.
Using Afrigator, I was able to establish that Africa does indeed have a large number of active blogs, more than I had even suspected. The full Afrigator blog listing in the order of the most blogs by country (as of this writing) was as follows:
- South Africa – 6390 blogs
- Nigeria – 1080 blogs
- Africa General – 776 blogs
- Kenya – 552 blogs
- Egypt – 322 blogs
- Ghana – 139 blogs
- Tanzania – 118 blogs
- Uganda – 108 blogs
- Tunisia – 84 blogs
- Cameroon – 82 blogs
- Morocco – 72 blogs
- Madagascar – 71 blogs
- Zimbabwe – 64 blogs
- Algeria – 44 blogs
- Ethiopia – 43 blogs
- Mauritius – 40 blogs
- Ivory Coast – 37 blogs
- DRC – 35 blogs
- Zambia – 34 blogs
- Malawi – 28 blogs
- Mozambique – 25 blogs
- Namibia – 25 blogs
- Botswana – 22 blogs
- Senegal – 21 blogs
- Angola – 21 blogs
- Somalia – 17 blogs
- Cape Verde – 13 blogs
- Sudan – 12 blogs
- Congo – 12 blogs
- Mali – 10 blogs
- Libya – 9 blogs
- Togo – 9 blogs
- Rwanda – 9 blogs
- Lesotho – 9 blogs
- Swaziland – 7 blogs
- Niger – 7 blogs
- Benin – 6 blogs
- Sierra Leone – 6 blogs
- Liberia – 6 blogs
- Burkina Faso – 5 blogs
- Seychelles – 4 blogs
- Eritrea – 4 blogs
- R̩union Р3 blogs
- Gambia – 3 blogs
- Mauritania – 3 blogs
- Djibouti – 2 blogs
- Mayotte – 2 blogs
- Sao Tomé and PrincÃpe – 2 blogs
- Guinea – 2 blogs
- Burundi – 2 blogs
- Western Sahara – 2 blogs
- Chad – 1 blogs
- Equatorial Guinea – 1 blogs
- Central African Republic – 1 blogs
The Author
2 Comments
I think they are even more considering some people may not be on the Webring or Gator.
At times people do not know how to insert the badges so the blogs do not show on the aggregator.
Very soon a bloggers workshop will address the elementary issues and the numbers will skyrocket
Moses, considering that Afrigator picks up content only from registered members, we cannot use its stats to determine how big Africa is blogging. However its a good resource for bloggers and it means if you are not there, your blog might not even be worth looking at or you have no interest of getting your blog to the African reader. BTW…most of the blogs on Afrigator from Kenya are actually Kenyans abroad.