African Bloggers Make Noise with Kelele

Kelele was announced to a room of well over two hundred people at BarCamp Africa a few days ago. It’s big news as it’s the first time anyone has attempted to organize a pan-African conference aimed at web 2.0, mobile, and new media. The date is scheduled for August 13, 2009 which puts it nearly a year away but when it comes to organizing conferences of this scale, that’s no time at all, and it will be here before we realize it! Here’s how the organizers describe it:

Kelele is an annual African bloggers’ conference held in a different African city each year and run by an organizing committee in that city. Kelele will be held for the first time in August 2009 in Nairobi, Kenya.

In Europe, America and all around the world events like this are commonplace and happen very frequently. What Kelele represents, and why it’s so tremendously positive, is an initiative to launch a homegrown conference that has the world’s attention. It’s not a Barcamp, it’s not a TED event, it’s not an O’Reilly event; this is Africa celebrating Africa’s contributions to the social web. While it’s true that all of the aforementioned events have taken place on African soil, it’s important for the African continent to do more than just participate with the world development community; it has to contribute. Kelele is just the sum of many of those contributions and has all the potential to become every bit as influential as conferences like Future of Web Apps or Where 2.0.

I know I’m getting ahead of myself here, but I wonder how they’ll decide what city to hold it in 2010? ^{(*ahem* Kampala *wink* *wink*)}