Théophile Kouamouo, the project leader of the Rising Voices grantee Abidjan Blog Camps [1] posts an assessment of Ivorian blogs and its blogosphere after two years of success. He responds [2] to some of the questions like 1) what is the the state of Ivorian blogosphere? 2) What are the challenges of today after intial successes? etc. during the interview [3] given to BOBS award winner blogger Israël Yoroba (Yoro) in a Web Radio broadcast at Avenue 225.
[4]On Saturday, December 19, 2009 the second Alloco Bloggers Party, organized by Manassé Déhé (Cartunelo), took place in Abidjan, Ivory Coast [5]. Dozens of Ivorian bloggers were present including several bloggers who attended the Abidjan blog camps. Dinde Fernando writes [6]:
The Alloco Bloggers Party is a concept created by Israël Yoroba and his dynamic small team to gather bloggers residing in Ivory Coast (Côte d Ivory) around a table, to enable them to become better acquainted and discuss their work. (machine translation)
Bob Traoré Djess writes [7] in his blog Cogito:
[8]I blog, therefore I am. [..] Last Saturday, members of the Ivorian blogosphere moved from virtual to reality, via the Alloco gathering.
In this edition of Alloco, the masks have fallen, and all the bloggers present were finally able to see, physically, feel, admire, touch each other. Finally they could put a face to each name.
Richman sheds a light [9] about the concerns of profitability by the bloggers, which was discussed a lot during the Alloco meeting.
Edith Brou Yah describes [10] the foods served in that meeting:
On the menu, there was the Alloco (a traditional dish of West and Central Africa), the fries, the chicken and fried fish, the kédjénou well spiced and attieke. We drank, we ate but we mostly chatted, laughed and exchanged.
Yoro (Israël Yoroba) celebrated the 2nd birthday of his blog and reflects what blogging has brought to him [11]:
[12]I still remember the first week I got 10 unique visitors (my brothers and sisters, my girlfriend at the time and some friends). Today, I have a large family of blogger, I have friends in the world …
I met people I never imagined seeing (except on TV). Je suis entré dans des endroits ou même dans mes rêves cela ne serait pas possible. I went into places or even in my dreams it would not be possible. Two years have passed … I have never traveled as I did in 25 years … Ghana, Dakar, Bonn, Marseille, Paris, Stockholm, Bamako. Today I received a scholarship to study [13] in one of the top schools of journalism in Europe.
My greatest satisfaction was having inspired several bloggers. And today, the family becomes more and wider … wider … wider.
Israël Yoroba runs Avenue 225 [14], the successful citizen journalism platform of Ivory Coast. On behalf of Avenue 225 he trained eight citizen journalists [15] last month.
[16]
Based on success of Avenue 225, Israël Yoroba also founded [15] Avenue 223 for neighboring Mali, which will be hosted by local bloggers. It is dedicated to the daily life and current affairs in Mali.
Richman posts [17] an interesting story that in Ivory coast, some coffee sellers serves coffee controlling the intensity according to the order of the customer denoted by a hand gesture. So without knowing it your natural hand gesture can get you the wrong coffee.
Image credit: Traoré de Djess [18] and Israël Yoroba [15]