Maneno

Maneno is a blogging application powered by PHP, Smarty, and MySQL with content management capabilities. Initially released in October, 2008, it focuses on creating a multi-theme, multi-author, multi-lingual system that works in a hosted setting [1]. The name Maneno means 'words' in Swahili and focuses on having low latency/filesize options to make it fast to load on low bandwidth connections [2]. Additionally, it has an architecture that allows for heavy customization by end users.

The core of the system was envisioned after a trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2008 by two of the founders. They realized that while trying to write articles from the country via VSAT connections, the connection speeds proved incredibly slow and discouraging for not only them, but anyone striving to pursue citizen journalism endeavors [3]. Additionally it was shown that the language spheres of Africa had nearly no crossover between one another. Taking these issues in to account and coming to the conclusion that no current blogging system adequately addressed them, this entirely new platform for blogging was created to serve the African blogging community.

Currently Maneno is available in Bambara, English, Spanish, French, Fula, Swahili, Lingala, Portuguese, and Zulu. The available languages cover all of the lingua franca languages of Africa as well as a selection of large local African languages that are gradually being added to. The site works in allowing a user to be able to view and interact with the site in any one of the languages available for the interface as well as being able to translate articles and sections of the site via a crowdsourcing method [4].

In August of 2010, Maneno announced that would be scaling back their extensive social media outreach initiatives to focus on developing the core technology of the site [5]

The Board of Directors is a group of bloggers and technology enthusiasts working to expand the platform and reach out to new bloggers. Current members are: Rebecca Wanjiku, Elia Varela Serra, Saul Wainright, and Miquel Hudin.

External links

• Maneno
• ARS Electronica 2009 Digital Communities
• Blogging in Bambara with Maneno