The globalization of the pavement – a Tanzanian case study

Aftermath of the Gongo la Mboto explosions photo from the Michuzi Blog

On the morning of February 17th 2011 we had a three-way- Skype conversation about the previous nights events in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. A series of explosions at an ammunition depot located very close to the high-density residential area Gongo la Mboto had left 20 dead and hundreds injured. We were saddened to hear about the explosions, the second such incident in under two years and shocked that once again so many had been killed and injured in an incident that could have been so easily avoided. Coverage in the media outside Tanzania had been minimal. Both Anders and Ylva have family living in Dar, some of them close to Gongo la Mboto, and had spent the previous evening trying find out information about the blasts and if their family and friends were safe.

During our conversation it began to emerge that the process of searching out information about the blasts, making contact with family members, and reading updates on popular Tanzanian blogs had revealed the lively use of social media by the residents of Gongo la Mboto and the Tanzanian diaspora. A process of citizen media production that was filling an information void left by a local media slow to ask the difficult questions and disinterested international news networks. As our Skype chat continued it became clear that we had a mutual interest in the media practice that was evolving and how we might try to understand it from our own different experiences of media research and practice in Tanzania and sub-Saharan Africa.

The following article is we hope the first stage in an ongoing process as we try to understand better emerging (social) media practice in Tanzania, and sub-Saharan Africa. In the weeks following our first conversation we have exchanged ideas, documents and countless e mails in an attempt to structure the article into a cohesive piece that explores further some of the things we first talked about the morning after the blasts. Our discussion that day began with the suggestion that the way social media was being used during and after the explosions could be the logical progression of an oral media tradition which has long existed in Tanzania, the practice of using media as a social activity.

You can access the full article here

The ComDev blog seemed a suitable platform to publish our first version of this ongoing conversation. We are all interested to hear your thoughts and hope you have some interesting suggestions for our continuing research.

Hugo Boothby, Ylva Ekström and Anders Hög Hansen