www.VoiceofAfricans.com
This venue is planned to be a social media site connecting people of Africa in diaspora as well as non-Africans to engage in friendship, community, business and social relationships and above all political agitation. The Site will have a dual format. The first is a social and relationships environment where people will meet other people and share their experiences and pictures similar to the Facebook experience. The second is a town hall environment where people will meet people from their country and supporters from around the world who want to organize and discuss issues of interest to them and also plan how to mobilize for change within the country. This interface to be known as “the Square” will be sub-divided by country. The functionality of the Square, will organized around discussion forums for each African, and Caribbean country.
PROPOSED USER CAPABILITIES
Country Discussion Forums: (E.g. S.A., Mozambique, Zambia, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya etc.) The pattern of this concept is similar to the sports sites that have developed around US college athletics such as 247.com, rivals.com, etc. It will also draw on elements of Linkedin. In the sports template, there is one master site and sub-sites for each school. For instance Rivals, the main site has sub-sites like; Orangebloods for Texas fans; Badgerblitz for
Wisconsin-Madison fans; Soonerscoop for Oklahoma fans; TheWolverine for Michigan fans, etc. Rivals covers all the conferences and has about 80 individual sub-sites for each school all of which function as an issues town hall. AfricanVoices.com will have the same structure but built for greater volume of individual interface with members that will hopefully number in the hundreds of millions.
POLITICAL COMMUNITY
African countries are inundated by rogue governments and have been since independence. The pattern, on average, is that once people are elected, they develop a great propensity for rigging the system to forestall ever having to leave office. Therefore, instead of working for the country and people, such governments are preoccupied with the intrigue and machinations associated with remaining in power. It invariably results in a type of government that is not of the people; but rather, a government by people who are in power for the sake of power and one that has absolutely no vision for leading and improving the lives of their people. They are often lawless, disregarding the law and due process while they ride roughshod over the journalists,
political opponents and society at large.This is done to provide cover while they steal the resources of the country because their “true” agenda is that they took to politics and entered government in order to become rich. Once having achieved power they settle in to engorge themselves on the people’s resources while as they say, “Rome burns.” The rationale makes perfect “warped-mind” sense. As long as people are cowering and afraid to say anything because they have witnessed brutal repression of colleagues or people whom they have read about, no one is likely to feel safe to step forward and expose corruption even when they witness it happening.
A FORUM FOR VIGOROUS ACTIVISM FOR CHANGE IN EVERY/ANY COUNTRY
The hope is that through voiceofafricans.com, opposition to rogue governments can gather and coalesce around grassroots activism and discourse that will gain enough momentum to pushback in a way that cannot be squashed. It will also empower people to anonymously plan all sorts of activities within the country discussion forums in order to avoid reprisals from rogue governments.
For instance, the political community within the country forums, will be the place where people rally support for or against “rogue” governments, develop and marshal millions in unison with the course of correcting the government or removing them from office. It will have the capacity to host mammoth town hall meetings on-line where thousands of people can participate in planning the course of opposition.
SOCIAL COMMUNITY
This is the social interface for meeting people, exchanging personal experiences including photographs. People can constrain their usage to this aspect of the interface or expand it to include using the country discussion forums where they can hold family get-togethers, school and class reunions, celebrate special occasions, and participate in activities with people who are celebrating events across the world from where they are located.