 Abdou Makayang, 16, is determined to become a doctor. Every dalassi he can scrape is spent at the internet cafe on websites for biology to ensure he gets the grades he needs. From a large and poor family and studying in an average-to-bad school, the net is Abdou's only salvation. But its high access costs threaten his hope to one day be able to support his parents and siblings But the key is his facebook page, through which he communicates with family and supporters in the West. Abdou could be supported to travel to Lusaka and explain first hand the experience of the African schoolchild and the internet in his own words. | Who are Africa's online heroes ?They are not the holders of big educational budgets, nor the business entrepreneurs of the mobile boom.They are ordinary and often modest Africans driven by their own desire to learn, and supported only by their own creativity.They have made unconventional use of online and mobile technology, on the margins of normal affordance.They have reinvented the technology of the online world to remarkable effect. | Sarah ben Hamadi, 24, got a job assembling copy for a French internet service agency. Her labour was cheaper and better than the same input created in France. For three months writing sales blurb about Club Med, she was also privately writing a controversial political blog. Now she's been hired as a columnist and journalist on Tuniscope, where her polemics are widely read in France and worldwide.  Sarah would be able to appear on our platform in Lusaka and give voice and depth to her digital diary. |
