Posts by ory

We all know that the traditional media outlets often provide biased coverage of Africa, if at all. So where do you go if you want to get a more nuanced picture of the continent?

Blogs, of course.

Some of my recommendations on where to get started:

• African Path: The uber-blog for African news, featuring some of the top bloggers and writers from across the continent. Sign up to their mailing list to receive regular updates.
• Global Voices Sub-Saharan Africa coverage - the BEST place to get an introduction to the range of bloggers in Africa.
• Afrigator: an aggregator of African blogs.
• Blog Africa: another aggregator of African blogs.
• African Women Blogs: an aggregator focusing specifically on women bloggers.

The images of the violent repression in Myanmar have stirred something in me. Not just a sense of outrage, but also a deep appreciation for the freedoms that I enjoy as a Kenyan and for the people who sacrified their lives to make it happen.

Amidst all the stories about democracy faltering in Africa it is important to remember the gains that are being made around the continent, especially in post-conflict countries.

It's almost two years since President Ellen Sirleaf-Johnson came to power in Liberia. Progress as far is rebuilding the country is slow but ongoing, and perhaps the big news story is that there is no big news story. A quick search of BBC news website, reveals headlines about revealing clothes being banned in school and the discovery of ghost workers - a far cry from the days when the devastating civil war dominated the headlines.

Let's not forget the peaceful elections in Sierra Leone and the historic first democratic elections in DRC.

My message, yes - there is still a lot of work to be done, but progress is being made and we are increasingly seeing African countries finding solutions to their own problems.

The future can only be brighter, no?