A new meme is making the rounds in the African francophone blogopshere and is now gradually spreading through the anglophone zone. It was begun by Théo Kouamouo, a blogger based in Abidjan (Côte d’Ivoire). Théo asked bloggers to reflect on why they blog about Africa and tagged a few friends to get the ball rolling. Their responses were collected by Global Voices in this post. He offered this answer to his own question (translated from French):

I blog about Africa with joy because I believe that it is from our individual and mixed voices that the African renaissance will sprout, which will come as surely as Martin Luther King’s dream became a reality forty years later. I read African-oriented blogs with joy because they give me a less monolithic and less doomed image of the continent and its inhabitants.

I began blogging about Africa (or, more precisely, my corner of it) as a way to keep my friends and family in touch with my daily life here as a technologist. Over time, the focus shifted away from my personal experience to the stories of the people I met in Cameroon and elsewhere on the continent. In the process, the blog became much more conversational and, if the traffic numbers are any indication, interesting to a broader audience. Just one recent example is Roland Boula’s podcasting story and the ripples it sent through my online social network.

Another reason I blog about Africa is because I’m intrigued by the spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship I see here in Cameroon and the continent as a whole. I’m passionate about technology, and I truly believe we’re on the verge of witnessing a Renaissance that will largely be fueled by ICT and led by pioneering young Africans. It’s an exciting place to be, and blog about, for this reason alone.

I can’t resist propagating a good meme, so with that I’ll tag an interesting mix of Cameroonian bloggers:

Mambe Nanje Churchill
Our Man In Cameroon
Camerooned
My African Father

This is a follow-up photo post to my previous entry How to Light An African Village. I’m enthusiastic about the innovations my housemates from Green Step observed in their recent foray into the village, so I wanted to highlight some of their discoveries. They completed a trip from Dschang to Bafoussam, Bamenda, Kumbo and Mbouda back to Buea in 60 hours—that’s travel through four provinces on some very unforgiving roads.

Along the way they made stops at three Cameroonian-founded and staffed NGOs dedicated to building renewable energy solutions from local materials. The work these groups are doing is nothing short of astounding. I’m far from being an expert in the field, but as an engineer of a different sort I’m able to recognize the sound application of appropriate technology when I see it. With a locally-built wind or water turbine the notion of a Cameroonian village lit with LED light fixtures isn’t so farfetched.

Scroll down to the bottom of Green Step’s blog entry for more details about their trip and the Cameroonian entrepreneurs they met.

I received an email yesterday from Jamillah Knowles, host of the Pods and Blogs show on BBC Radio 5 Live, mere hours after I posted Roland Boula’s story “Podcasting the Blues From Cameroon”. She asked if we might arrange an interview to chat about blogging from Africa, the people who follow my blog, pitfalls relating to my location and so on. Without naming names, I suspect that a certain VSO in Bamenda played a role in making this connection. If my suspicions are correct, let’s just say that the power of Twitter and social networking tools truly are wonderful.

Naturally, I’m excited to chat with Jamillah and air my views on the show. Likewise, I’m hopeful that we can build a broad base of public enthusiasm for Roland’s blues podcast. Stay tuned.

Last April I blogged about Roland Boula (see the “Blues Scholar”) and his solitary existence as the caretaker of Madison Park, a small beach resort outside of Limbe. Roland has remained one of my closest and most trusted friends in Cameroon. In the presence of others, he’s fond of saying that we actually came from the same mother, indicating that our different skin color is only a small variation of inherited traits routinely observed between siblings. We often share a good laugh at this, but I’d be proud to call Roland my brother any day of the week.

In addition to being an all-around nice guy, Roland is one of those rare individuals with the soul of an artist, the discerning eye of an engineer and the heart of a poet. A typical day at Madison Park might find him wrenching an engine, roofing a building or struggling variously to stem the inevitable decay brought by the salt air upon a half-acre of goods imported by his patron. In his spare time—if he’s lucky to have any— Roland’s escape is into the music borne of African rhythms: blues, jazz, gospel and soul.

When I first met Roland, he showed me his prized vinyl collection which included a half-dozen scratchy LPs and a paperback encyclopedia of blues and jazz recording artists. He talked of the history of various sub-forms of the genres, of which artist inspired whom, their personal stories and so on. True to form, he then showed me how he’d engineered an ingenious solution to adapt a mismatched needle to an old turntable he found in Douala.

That was two years ago. Since then, Roland has scrimped and saved enough cash to buy a secondhand laptop computer. He told me he’d reserved a third of his salary for months until he was able to do so. The seller had loaded Windows Vista on it, apparently in an effort to boost its perceived value, but only succeeding in making the thing slower to boot and operate. Roland asked if I could carry his treasured laptop back to Buea to install Windows XP (smart man), reload the drivers and add “some music software” if I had any.

Now, this is the sort of short-term IT project I can really sink my teeth into. The following weekend, I returned to Madison Park with Roland’s laptop configured precisely as it should be, which included an ultimate blues collection of more than 90 artists and 1,500 individual tracks. Along with a selection of MP3 software and various other goodies, I included a laptop DJ program that simulates two turntables and a mixer. Of everything, Roland was most taken by the latter.

The reason was clear. If Roland had his druthers, he told me, he’d host his own radio program in which he plays thematic selections from his collection and “tell the story of the blues.” I mentioned podcasting as a means of expanding his audience beyond the greater Limbe/Buea/Tiko area to include listeners from all over the world. This struck a chord with him. He has most of the tools at his disposal already, save for recording software and Internet access.

With the frequency of my visits to Limbe I can easily carry Roland’s podcast back to Buea with me on a USB drive where I can upload it at the office. That’s the easy part. However, I’ll confess that aside from occasionally using recording tools like Audacity I wouldn’t know where to start with creating a podcast. So if any readers can recommend their preferred podcasting setup, please post a comment. Open source or freeware apps for the Windows platform are what we’re after, preferably something without too steep of a learning curve.

With some luck, you might soon be listening to Roland’s blues show recorded where the sky meets the sea in the SW of Cameroon.