Ethan Zuckerman has had more than his fair share of the African ICT community excitement.

He sticks a needle in the overblown (mis)conception that blogging will usher in e-democracy, and even further, begin to pave an interstate across the digital divide between first and third world nations. A poignant critique of Jim Moore's The Second Superpower Rears Its Beautiful Head and Joi Ito's Emergent Democracy.

Zuckerman sites the imbalanced blogging community/overall media representation -- Africa with 1/5th the world population has less than 1% access to ICT (blogging) infrastructure, big media coverage on Africa, home to 1/5th the world population, boils down to 30 second sound bites.   

Zuckerman focuses very narrowly on blogging and the specific obstacles on its path to mount ubiquity, but I was hoping Zuckerman would succumb to wanderlust and veer off into the twilight zone -- the realm of difficulties with the African culture adopting and sustaining ICT. 

Ok, so we know Africa keeps rejecting western technology just like the human immuno system would reject a transplanted organ. So the focus shifts to "indigenization" of western technology in Africa -- Technology doesn't exist in limbo, the different sectors of the national economy feeds off each other: commerce will be limited by poor transportation infrastructure, social amenities and overall quality of life will be limited by national unemployment rates, and ICT adoption will be limited by massive poverty of the African populace. It's a chicken and egg situation -- the problems feed off each other.

Back to the organ transplant analogy -- as Africa writhes in the throes of ICT assimilation, it is crucial to maintain her on a course of immune system inhibitors.

And so, the million dollar question -- what exactly is this course of immuno-inhibitor medication that would stabilize Africa as she makes full recovery?

You have some answers out there, so lets hear it!!!!