| UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA - AFRICAN STUDIES CENTER |
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.
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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
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** 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.apc.org. To see sample PWN digests before you subscribe, connect to the address gopher.igc.apc.org; port 7014, or the URL <gopher://gopher.igc.apc.org:7014/11>
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.apc.org and apc-info@igc.apc.org respectively.
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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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Message-Id: <199603050314.TAA22220@igc3.igc.apc.org> From: "APIC" <apic@igc.apc.org> Date: Mon, 4 Mar 1996 22:02:11 -0500 Subject: Africa: Getting News from Africa
Editor: aadinar@mail.sas.upenn.edu