The United States of America is the ‘father’ of the internet, so also of the blogosphere. The phenomenon of blogging acquired substance over the last five years, and the foremost Bloggers in the world are from North America.
On the internet, five years is a long time. It is almost like 50 years. Africa and Nigeria are late-comers into the information technology revolution, same for the Blogging Revolution. It is my fervent belief that we can close that digital gulf by short-circuiting the acquisition of ICT knowledge.
The internet world has become like a global village. Information travels fast in a village setting, and every inhabitant knows one other. It is difficult for a stranger to arrive and settle down to live in a village and not be noticed. The attitude of that stranger could make or mar his plans to become part of the village.
In the blogosphere consisting of about 106 million blogs as at today, (October 2007), only about a hundred thousand blogs are worth their salt. If we must succeed as bloggers, we must see the blogging business as a marathon race, involving 100,000 athletes. If anybody is worth beating in this blogging race, it is those 100,000 most active blogs, that we are contending with.
If we must succeed as prosperous bloggers, we need a disciplined approach to blogging. You cannot do it the way Americans do it. They took blogging like a hobby; we must take blogging as inalienable duty. We must recognize that as Africans, we are ‘late-comers’ into the blogosphere, and as such, we have a Herculean task to surmount the obstacles put on our way by our circumtances and by those who have gone before us.
We need a zeal fired by our passion, and mixed with a writing skill to become bloggers of distinction.
It would take military discipline to overtake and outpace American leisure bloggers who have gone ahead of us on the blogging road, long before we become bloggers.
It takes military discipline to post five articles daily on your blog for 90 days uninterrupted.
It takes military discipline not to get heady and relax at little successes, in the beginning of your blogging career.
It would take military discipline to carry and plant the indelible mark of Africa on the global map of the Blogosphere.
For the above reasons, we need an ‘army’ of bloggers instilled with the vision of exploits and filled with consuming passion, ready to dynamite the blogosphere, and change the perceived backwardness of Africa, in every facet of development.
WE may nurture and grow some 2,000 -3,000 bloggers over the next three years to 2010, but we need an elite company of outstanding 100 bloggers from Africa, who would lift up their heads with pride in the comity of successful bloggers world wide.
Presently no African is on the Top 100 rank in the bogosphere. My dream and vision is to:
(i) Raise 100 probloggers in the next one year to earn a living income of ($2,000+) monthly solely from their blogging activities.
(ii) Invade the Top 100 Blogs in Technorati with 20 elite bloggers from Africa within the next 3 years.
(iii) Populate and popularize blogging in Africa, to the extent that in 3 years to come, we would parade about 3,000 proud bloggers of note from Africa doing exploits in their various niches.
(iv) Get 80 African bloggers into the Top 500 in the world in 3 years time.
Will you join this army? Would you enlist with us? Would you march with us without breaking ranks? In Nigeria, I know of about 3 bloggers who are already pushing the frontiers with monthly incomes above two thousand Dollars. Let us go up together and make Africa proud….