Jun 10 2008
Community Profile
I’ve asked my friends about this, and the thing we all want to know more about is the good happening in Africa. The good happening with Africans, on the continent or within the Diaspora. Our big questions are: How is the African community doing? And how can I be a part of the change for a better Africa?
This blog’s community is large and consists of the entire African Diaspora, as well as anyone interested in Africa. If I were going to narrow down the community, since I’m in my 20s, some of the content would probably appeal more to those in their 20s and 30s. And the blog also is to serve Africans who are children of immigrants and not necessarily immigrants themselves.
A large thing this community is lacking is a place for them to go and get news, updates, and general information about thier community and things that are going on within it. Mostly there are various sites and information and forum groups out there, but there is no site that brings all these togehter — Out of Africa will do that.
I mostly used facebook, and comments from friends and family to do my research. Based on the topics in many group sites (mostly asking where to find certain resources for Africans, issues dealing with Africa’s debt and economic/political situations, books/clothes/food, language, music), I feel like my blog is already serving a lot of the interests of the community. But it can by far to a lot more.
A lot of Africans in the Diaspora use the internet and are online as a way to reconnect with old friends, and a way to connect to the very large community (it is world-wide, after all). There are websites, forum groups, magazines, etc out there for Africans. However, there’s none that really works as a connector between Africa and its Diaspora. Most of them simply serve the general interests of the Diaspora (i.e. helping them create an African community in the new country).
Right now my community looks like this; For the most part, I’m really happy with it –considering that I didn’t really publicize myself except to family and friends.
Unlike some of my classmates’ blogs, I think the audience for my blog is VERY large and VERY wide. And what interests them is a little bit of everything. It just needs to be relevant to Africa. With my plan, I hope to increase this community and make it so that every single white space eventually turns at least a light shade of green.
