I am an activist when it comes to web 2.0 and I personally think Africans too can own web 2.0 ventures but there are some issues that will not let our ventures grow. I wrote a whole blog post about this, follow the link below

http://mambenanje..com/2008/05/why-social-networks-media-sites-cannot.html

you can read all that and reply on this topic if you think you have other reasons why web 2.0 is not working yet in Africa.

great Challenge I put forth is: Can your web 2.0 solution convert non Internet users to become internet users here in Africa ??

ur challenge question says it all.

How many people have a computer at home? how many people can afford to spend money at a cyber cafe? How many people have money for their basic needs, not to mention money to spare for browsing? How many people have electricity to browse the net when they want to? How many areas have electricity in the first place? Of the places that don't, how many people in such places can afford a generator or inverter?

The above are some of the questions that need answering.

In my opinion, generally speaking, the average African is overwhelmed by social networks. I mean, you have the facebooks and the myspaces and if I were to extrapolate from NL alone, I would say there are at least 1000 social networks per African country. How do they differ? What makes them unique? How many usernames and passwords do I have to remember? In the end, 99% of them are basically a knock off of say, NL, the only difference being the background color.

Anyways, that is how I see it.

ok tunde,
look at it this way, since Americans have the best airways, Africa should just use theirs and not start. Maybe its not the best example, since there are soo many sattelites out there in space, why should Glo host their own sattelite instead of renting space on another one.
Its all about business, we can setup a social media solution thats good for the africans, and has somethign that facebook, myspace and hi5 dont have because those guys are not in Africa. The can never feel what we feel, they will never solve our problems.
Well a social network for fun ( facebook, myspace) is not the way to go for Africans, we dont have money to spend on fun we need to make money.
Can Facebook help an African make money ?
so if someone builds a social network that helps africans make money, is it not worth a taste of it
I bet you if the right social network rises for africa by africans Tunde I will see you on it