For the last two years, my secondary interest (apart from web design and illustrations) has been the African continent. I do not know where this interest came from. I suspect it must have been after reading No. 1 Ladies’s Detective Agency series by Alexander McCall Smith.

I am well aware that I am pandering to a stereotype by referring to this vastly diverse set of people as “Africans”. Africa: A Biography of the Continent opened my eyes to the start contrasts in African regions. But, I hope this list below gets beyond such stereotypes.

If you follow Fox news or the CNN you might think Africa is either a continent constantly at war or filled with naked poor people clicking their tongues (yes, I am exaggerating a bit — only a bit!). If you want to know better, you have to look elsewhere. Here are some of my sources of African news, music, culture that I have come to love.

• Chris Blattman’s blog Chris Blattman talks a lot about Africa, aid, development, and conflicts. Very informative and entertaining for someone from the academia!
• Foreign Policy Blog Foreign Policy has the most thorough coverage of World News daily (even better than the BBC), as far as I know.
• Seattle World Music Blog I discovered Magic System through them. Enough said.
• The Esteyonage talks about daily life in Liberia. I really like these posts on how people get by despite 85% unemployment in Liberia. The sidebar has great links to other blogs on Africa.
• BibliOdyssey blogs about old artwork/papers that are in the online archives of libraries/websites from all corners of the world. The blog does not cover African stories frequently, but every post on African art/manuscript blows my mind.
• Ugandan Insomniac blogs about Ugandan living, culture, and news. The African Reading Challenge was a great source of reading recommendations for books on Africa.
• Wronging Rights is a hilarious but tragic look at the abuses perpetrated around the world. Every post is worth its weight in gold!
• Africa Unchained is a formal look at news and projects occurring in Africa.
• Elia writes about some little know films in or about Africa (among other things). A great read. There is an interesting twitter feed, but I am not sure if it is the author’s.
• Jack Fruity writes about technology, aid, and development. She also tweets.
• Nairobi Notes covers all things African. The author is more active on twitter
• Congo Girl writes about everything in Democratic Republic of Congo. I actually like her twitter feed more!
• Scarlett is a photojournalist based in Liberia. Excellent tweets and blog.
• Rarin is an African software engineer in US. A perfect combination for my African information hunger!
• Julia O is the publisher of Kenya Imagine (twitter).
• Erik Hersman is the founder of AfriGadget.
• Kaushal Jhalla organizes Bar Camp Africa in SFO, and writes about technology and Africa.
• Tim Akinbo writes about Web, Mobile, Location based services on his blog (I like the tweets more, as usual).

I have created an OPML file if you are interested in bulk adding these blogs to your feed reader (it does not include twitter links).

I will cover the podcasts I listen to and books I liked in the next post! Meanwhile, is there any other blog/twitter account you recommend following? Do post below!