Global Voices Online

Toujours pas sages from Bamako, Mali and elsewhere share [Fr] everything you wish to know about the Soccer African Cup of Nations on CAN 2010, a blog created for the occasion by members of French Lingua team Boukary Konate and Claire Ulrich. The blog enables you to follow the games live, via links, Twitter comments and much more.

Myweku.com explores the use of African textiles for contemporary African Art décor: “Framed, used as wall hangings or for soft furnishings such as scatter cushions, African textiles with their bold geometric designs and sunny colours are perfect for the Chic look. strip-woven Kente cloth, from Ghana, is one example of the many wonderful textiles produced especially in West Africa.”

Introducing BlogCamps in Africa: “Over the next six months keep an eye for Maneno sponsored BlogCamps in Africa to happen in Côte d'Ivoire, Mali, Ghana, and Guinea.”

Elia writes about new Maneno T-shirts and projects for 2010. Maneno is a multilingual blogging platform: “For the first half of 2010, Maneno is going to be based in Côte d'Ivoire. From there, we will continue to work on building out and promoting the Maneno platform…'

Dino's visa experience at Mali embassy: “My Mali experience made me think about the visa experiences both with South -South travels, and South-North travels. I also thought of what it meant to be a North-South traveller. South-South Travels were clearly much easier than South-North travels. Just recently, there has been a raging debate about the difficulties encountered when looking for a visa to France (14 Nov Travel, Saturday Star).”

GVO in French translator and Mali-based Bambara blogger Boukary Konate, who blogs at Fasokan, is featured [Fr] in Africascopie, a blog of the French daily Le Monde.  They call him “the unrepentant blogger”, and you can listen to a podcast of a “smashing” interview.  In an earlier entry of the “collaborative report”, he talks about new media as a great way out of the crisis and to raise awareness, “if we go to the trouble of translating them into our national languages” and can bring cheaper and more efficient internet access in African countries.

American blogger in Bamako writes about her experiences while conducting a survey in rural Mali: We left around 8:30 in the morning (I knew even then that this was way too late of a start). We walked 1km to the moto taxi junction and waited for a moto taxi. Eventually we found one that was heading towards Allahhena - the village where we would need to get out and walk to the river.

Le Pangolin writes about Teriya Bugu, a model village on the Niger river, in Mali, “proof that Africa has every opportunity to advance so long as it invests in people, especially farmers.  Hope is a value Africa should invest in” [Fr]

Mali Travel Diaries writes about Mali's multilinguism, a country where French is the official language and 50 others are spoken.