My Beauty Best Teacher

The 24 Nairobi project is intended as a showcase of a modern African city through the eyes of its own photographers. A lot of times cities in Africa are viewed through the narrow lenses and stories of missionaries, career war photographers and aid workers.24 Nairobi brings together local, regional and international creative professionals to evolve powerful and realistic images and narratives that would reflect the working-life diversity, cultures, energy and dimensions of cities in Africa.-project website
via Kenyan Pundit

Image via WikipediaIndigenous methods of conflict resolution make a strong international debut. Scott Baldauf at CS Monitor examines the role of elders in the recent Kenya crisis:

At a time when Kenya's angry "young turks" were whipping up the emotions that fed violence, these African elders had the calming influence of a stern grandparent, in front of whom one doesn't misbehave.
"I came in at a time when there was so much mistrust," recalls Koffi Annan in an interview later. "The two blocks had dug in. One felt they had won the elections fair and square, the other maintained 'you stole it.' "
"With that sort of attitude, getting them to come together, and getting them to begin to think of coming together, and ... thinking in terms that we are all Kenyans and we are one Kenya, and we need to work together to put it back together, was not an easy task," he says with a large dose of understatement.Today, five months later, an uneasy alliance is holding...[continue reading]

From the Advocacy Project's blogging and photography initiative:

The workshops began with an introduction to blogging and photography, going over the basics of what makes a good blog and photo. Then we went out to take photos as a group and uploaded them from the camera to the computer and put them on a flash drive. Meanwhile, the students were writing, editing and sharing their first blogs on their own and in class. Once the pictures and first blogs were complete, we ventured to the Internet café to type the blogs, create email accounts, blogging accounts and Flickr accounts. Once the accounts were created, they posted their material online on their own pages...[continue reading]

Co-founded by Ory Okolloh of Kenyan Pundit Mzalendo's mission is to "keep an eye on the Kenyan Parliament."It was established for the following reasons:

1. It is very difficult to get information about what Kenyan Members of Parliament are doing when in Parliament. Though the Hansard offers a verbatim transcript of Parliamentary proceedings it is not widely circulated or accessible. In addition, even if one could get access to the Hansard, extracting relevant information can be time consuming. Furthermore, there is virtually no way of knowing what government business is being conducted in Parliament; for instance, the contents of draft bills are rarely publicized.
2. The Kenyan government is still very much a “closed society” — the default de facto presumption is that the public does not have a right know unless they have special permission. The fact that the official Parliament website is still shut down after an uproar from some MPs who were upset that their resumes were available online is a testament to this. By focusing on one of the major government institutions that should be the most accessible, Mzalendo aims to both “open” up Parliament and demonstrate that it is both possible and necessary for Kenyans to demand and expect more accountability from public institutions.
3. By relying on technology and the Internet, Mzalendo hopes to be especially accessible to young Kenyans. Young people will soon represent the largest voting bloc in Kenya and we believe that it is important to both get them engaged in public participation in ways that are appealing to them and give them the tools that will facilitate this engagement. In the near future, the site will offer interactive features including a discussion board, individual constituency blogs, and an opportunity to ask your MP questions and get a response online.
4. Although Mzalendo is a long-term project, we are cognizant of the fact that the 2007 elections are around the corner and we feel it is important for Kenyan voters to have a record of what their individual MPs have been doing since their election into Parliament. Our goal is to have a complete compilation of all the Parliamentary records from 2003 we are able to access available online.

Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe writes about the dire state of African Journalism "...Overall, there is a general agreement that the quality of journalistic praxis on the African continent, especially in the so-called Sub-Saharan Africa, widely regarded as also the least technologically developed in the region, leaves much to be desired..."In a series Ory Okolloh at Kenyan Pundit asks the question "What is ailing Kenyan journalism?" while Chippla questions the fact checking or lack thereof regarding 'prominent personalities'.