African Path is one of the most exciting African citizen media projects. It is an online platform whose content comes from bloggers, readers, artists, and specialists. It also aggregates news on Africa from different sources. At the moment, African Path has 24 bloggers writing articles on various topics such as politics, music, gender, history, popular culture, social activism, and identity politics. Joshua Wanyama, a Kenyan entrepreneur based in the US, is the co-founder of African Path. In 2003, after finishing his B.S in Architecture, he started Interactive Spectrum, a technology firm based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In January 1st, 2007 he officially launched African Path. A digital path of woven tales of Africa's past, present, and future. Recently, Joshua Wanyama spoke with Global Voices Online about the project. Ndesanjo Macha: Tell us about yourself and how/why you started blogging Joshua Wanyama: At the heart of all things, I am an entrepreneur. I seize the opportunities presented to me and try to make something of them. My partner and I had done a blog before to highlight the services our company, Spectrum Interactive, offered. I didn’t do much on that site. There were too many other things that I needed to accomplish and I couldn’t keep up with the blogging. I started blogging again once we decided to create African Path. It was a lot easier with content on Africa since I didn’t need to do a lot of research to understand the audience. I have been observing and participating in African culture since I was born. I have felt that knowledge is a key source of growth for humans in general and a necessary ingredient in the development of Africa. I felt a site like African Path would help the people who had experienced success and failure, want and excess to tell their stories. And those who were looking for such content could find it at a central point. The beauty of providing a working solution in Lesotho since it is already being executed in Chad is helpful in developing not just one country or ethnic group, but the knowledge can be shared and used in all countries thus fueling economic growth that we all seek in Africa. NM: What is African Path? JW: African Path is really a network of different knowledge bases that provide human connections and interactions. These knowledge bases cover as many fields as we could provide content for. The platform is online and the providers of content are bloggers, specialists, readers and artists who weave tales of our past, present and future. Hopefully what is put up influences someone to think further than what they have thought before, to network with people who share their vision or to create the ideal connection to enable one to elevate their living standards and give them a sense of dignity. NM: How did the idea and the name come about? JW: I have been working with newspaper clients for more than twenty months. Spectrum Interactive developed an online newspaper template (News Portal) that enables upstart and expanding news and blogging organizations to scale their services online. That meant the basic infrastructure for African Path was in place. In December of 2006, my partner and I decided to create our own news and blog aggregator site for Africa. We had tried getting partners who would edit such a site while we provided the marketing, brand and technology expertise but to no avail. We therefore restructured the company so I could dedicate my time on the development of African Path while he kept our other business interests going. I have always had a love for Africa and wanted to develop something with the abilities I had in order to have a positive impact on the continent. I think African Path is on the way to achieving that goal. Media coverage in Africa is predominantly biased and western based. We need an African perspective on the world stage so we can tell our own stories. My goal is to develop African Path into this vehicle. While searching for an appropriate name, I knew the name had to reflect an ever changing, ever growing perspective of African development. While one might be down today, tomorrow they would have moved forward. So African Path wants to be part of that move. We want to provide some of the things that one would use to make this move. Information is the greatest tool to empower a people. Africans need a source of information that makes it easier for them to be empowered. Yesterday’s mistakes should stay in the past. We need information to make the right decisions that help us move forward today. NM: Who are the people behind African Path? JW: My partner Charles Baarsch and I. Charles is a programmer by expertise and a visionary in how he sees the world especially business.