Africa: Getting News from Africa

Africa Policy E-Journal

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given the difficulty in maintaining up-to-date links in old files.
However, we hope they may still provide leads for your research.

Africa: Getting News from Africa
Date Distributed (ymd): 960304

The number of sources of on-line news from and about Africa is
increasing rapidly.  Most concentrate on one country or
region.  Many are available only on the World Wide Web or only
through e-mail.  Some are free, others require a subscription. 
And there are rapid changes, as new initiatives emerge or
volunteer efforts lapse after the initial enthusiasm wanes,
which make keeping track of what is currently available and
how to get it a time-intensive process. APIC's own selective
Africa Policy Electronic Distribution List is not designed to
provide current or comprehensive news coverage, but we receive
frequent inquiries asking where to get more information on
particular topics or countries. The following note, listing a
few on-line sources for news with a continent-wide scope, is
one installment in what will hopefully be a series of
occasional pointers to more extensive information sources.

The sources covered in this posting are 

(1) Africa News Online, available free on the World Wide Web
and for a fee through a variety of commercial services, which
serves as an outlet for the Pan African News Agency, the All
Africa Press Service, and a variety of other African media, as
well as Africa News' own reporting.

(2) The APC africa.news conference and the parallel Peacenet
World News Service (PWN), featuring primarily the regular news
wire of Inter Press Service (IPS). The africa.news conference
is available free to anyone with an account on IGC or other
APC networks. PWN also has an Africa digest and five digests
for different African regions available by e-mail to anyone
with an e-mail address for $4/month for one digest and
$2/month for each additional digest.

(3) University of Pennsylvania African Studies WWW site, one
of the most comprehensive and up-to-date academic sites for
Africa information.

***********************************************************
AFRICA NEWS ONLINE

A SHOWCASE FOR AFRICAN REPORTING

AFRICA NEWS ONLINE, an electronic distribution network created
by AFRICA NEWS Service to secure a high profile for African
issues in the expanding world of digital information, offers
a unique window on developments across the African continent.
AFRICA NEWS SERVICE, a non-profit agency which for two decades
has been a leading information source on Africa in the United
States, is working in partnership with African news agencies
and periodicals to make available current and background
material on topics ranging from politics and economics to
science, health, culture and sports.

Tune into AFRICA NEWS ONLINE for:

* News bulletins several times daily from the Panafrican News
Agency, which has 36 correspondents across the continent and
working relationships with national news agencies in 48
African countries.
* Selected stories from the African press, including major
dailies and such well-known independent publications as
Nigeria's Newswatch magazine, the Ugandan Monitor, Kenya's
Nation, the Post of Zambia, the Gambian Observer, and South
Africa's Mail and Guardian and New Nation.
* Special reports, investigative stories and wide-ranging
interviews by the award-winning Africa News team.
* Lively features and reports on topical and human-interest
issues from the Nairobi-based All Africa Press Service, an
affiliate of the All Africa Conference of Churches.
* In-depth business reporting, including updates on Africa's
currencies and rapidly growing stock markets.

Look for AFRICA NEWS on the World Wide Web
(http://www.afnews.org/ans) and on DataTimes (800-642-2525),
Lexis/Nexis (800-227-4908), and NewsNet (800-345-1301). Other
services distributing AFRICA NEWS ONLINE include American
Cybercasting (216-498-5100) and Comtex Custom Wires
(703-820-2000), as well as CompuServe (go Newsgrid) and
infoMarket (Lotus/IBM). 

Recipient of three national reporting awards in the last two
years, AFRICA NEWS SERVICE is widely recognized as a
pacesetter in specialized journalism. AFRICA NEWS reporting is
used by major U.S. print and broadcast media, including the
Washington Post and other newspapers, National Public Radio
and network television, and by international outlets such as
the BBC. 
___________________________________________
Box 3851 Durham, North Carolina 27702 USA
Telephone: 919-286-0747 Fax: 919-286-2614
Washington, D.C. Office (202) 546-3675 (phone/fax) 
Internet: ans@afnews.org

************************************************************
** PEACENET WORLD NEWS SERVICE ** 

PeaceNet World News Service (PWN) is a electronic mail
delivered news publication covering either a specific area of
the world or an issue of global importance. ...  The anchor of
the PeaceNet World News Service is the Inter Press Service
(IPS). IPS is ranked the world's fifth largest in terms of
media clients. Virtually invisible in the United States, IPS
aims to improve South->South and South->North news flows.
While western news agencies tend to focus on political
affairs, coups, crises and conflicts, IPS delivers news that
is analytical and contextualized, news that strsses global
interdependence. IPS's writers are all local people covering
the areas in which they live. IPS articles appear three days
after copyright. 

PWN has digests covering Africa as a whole, Southern Africa,
West Africa, West Central Africa, North Africa and Eastern
Africa.  The first digest costs $4/month, and each additional
digest $2/month, payable for three months in advance by credit
card.  

For an automatic reply with more detailed information about
PWN, send an e-mail message to pwn-info@igc.org.  To see
sample PWN digests before you subscribe, connect to the
address gopher.igc.org; port 7014, or the URL 


For information on the Institute for Global Communications
(IGC) in the U.S. and the Association for Progressive
Communication (APC), a worldwide network of affiliated non-
governmental networks, send e-mail messages to igc-
info@igc.org and apc-info@igc.org respectively.

************************************************************
University of Pennsylvania African Studies WWW

This is certainly among the most comprehensive, if not the
most comprehensive, academic sites with Africa material.  It
is now fully searchable.  For those with full Web access, and
time to hunt around, this is one of the best starting points,
with links to many other sites.  

The home page URL is:

http://www.sas.upenn.edu/African_Studies/AS.html

For those seeking current information on a particular topic or
country, the best links on the home page are probably either 

"What's New?"

http://www.sas.upenn.edu/African_Studies/Home_Page/
Whats_New.html  

or

"Country-Specific Pages"

http://www.sas.upenn.edu/African_Studies/Home_Page/
Country.html

[Note: For those without Web access, it is possible even if a
bit tedious to access these URLs by e-mail.  Home-page URL's
such as these will give you additional URLs which you can
request in separate messages.  Send a one-line e-mail message
to webmail@www.ucc.ie, containing the word "get" followed by
the URL.  Each URL must fit on one line and be typed exactly
as is.  For more information on using WebMail, send the
message "help" to webmail@www.ucc.ie.]

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