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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:

  1. South Africa – 6390 blogs
  2. Nigeria – 1080 blogs
  3. Africa General – 776 blogs
  4. Kenya – 552 blogs
  5. Egypt – 322 blogs
  6. Ghana – 139 blogs
  7. Tanzania – 118 blogs
  8. Uganda – 108 blogs
  9. Tunisia – 84 blogs
  10. Cameroon – 82 blogs
  11. Morocco – 72 blogs
  12. Madagascar – 71 blogs
  13. Zimbabwe – 64 blogs
  14. Algeria – 44 blogs
  15. Ethiopia – 43 blogs
  16. Mauritius – 40 blogs
  17. Ivory Coast – 37 blogs
  18. DRC – 35 blogs
  19. Zambia – 34 blogs
  20. Malawi – 28 blogs
  21. Mozambique – 25 blogs
  22. Namibia – 25 blogs
  23. Botswana – 22 blogs
  24. Senegal – 21 blogs
  25. Angola – 21 blogs
  26. Somalia – 17 blogs
  27. Cape Verde – 13 blogs
  28. Sudan – 12 blogs
  29. Congo – 12 blogs
  30. Mali – 10 blogs
  31. Libya – 9 blogs
  32. Togo – 9 blogs
  33. Rwanda – 9 blogs
  34. Lesotho – 9 blogs
  35. Swaziland – 7 blogs
  36. Niger – 7 blogs
  37. Benin – 6 blogs
  38. Sierra Leone – 6 blogs
  39. Liberia – 6 blogs
  40. Burkina Faso – 5 blogs
  41. Seychelles – 4 blogs
  42. Eritrea – 4 blogs
  43. Réunion – 3 blogs
  44. Gambia – 3 blogs
  45. Mauritania – 3 blogs
  46. Djibouti – 2 blogs
  47. Mayotte – 2 blogs
  48. Sao Tomé and Princípe – 2 blogs
  49. Guinea – 2 blogs
  50. Burundi – 2 blogs
  51. Western Sahara – 2 blogs
  52. Chad – 1 blogs
  53. Equatorial Guinea – 1 blogs
  54. Central African Republic – 1 blogs
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2 Comments

  1. July 17, 2009 at 11:29 am — Reply

    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

  2. July 29, 2009 at 4:00 am — Reply

    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.

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