AfDevInfo.com

Not-for-profit organisation AfDevInfo aims to take low-key local data from across sub-Saharan Africa and turn it into a useful information source about and for the continent. The 170,000 records published by its online service are cross-referenced and provide a mass of political, economic and industrial data on Africa.

Various visual aids such as maps and photos are available, as are links to external sources such as Google Earth. There are also links to news items in the mainstream media that are relevant to a particular story. Regular and concise newsletters provide updates to the latest research added to or amended on the site. Marry that kind of information together and you have the beginnings of a useful tool.

As a subscription-based service, AfDevInfo can be paid for annually or quarterly. Institutions pay as little as £375 a year, and the quarterly charge for individual subscribers is £40. In accordance with the organisation’s ethic of “supporting accountable and transparent government throughout Africa”, the site is free of charge for Africans.

AfDevInfo aims to have a dedicated researcher in every African country by 2010, although fulfilling this goal will depend on its commercial success in selling subscriptions and services to the developed world.

Targeted technology
It’s a worthy idea, but does it work well enough? First impressions are that the site looks basic, both as an information source and as an interface, but it is simple, no-nonsense and accessible by design so that those in remote areas or with dial-up connections and older hardware can use it.

The home page hosts a number of featured items and free downloads on the main part of its structure. These form a significant part of AfDevInfo and are as good a way as any to weigh into the throng of its databases.

However, the labelling of the key information points, or featured items as they are called, seems unintuitive. If they were categorised into more obvious streams, the impact would be greater.

What aggravates this drawback is that every time you return to the home page, the featured items seem to have moved around randomly. This makes the layout feel more chaotic than it need do.

Once you have chosen a featured item, a summary of each report with its linkable title is displayed. The number of records relating to the item and the version number of this collection are also displayed. This works as a helpful summary and a starting point, and makes more sense than the original step that takes you to the summary.
There is also a More Info link that provides additional pointers on the material. This could indicate when it was created, where the information came from or the latest developments that AfDevInfo is aware of. If there is a lack of data on some subjects, then it is often mentioned at this point, as is the reason why. Such openness is a credit to the site, as well as helpful to a user who may have otherwise gone on to conduct a fruitless search.

Before diving further into the data, you are also given the choice of viewing the information in a range of ways. Data display options include as a table in CSV format, via a Mindmanager application (either “rich’ or in “online mode”), and what is referred to as “online data”, which seems to be in the style of the rest of the website. I plumped for this most often to avoid having to use Mindmanager and because it was more presentable than just trawling through a formatted spreadsheet.

Once you have chosen a viewing option, a fully linked table of records opens up. In one of the examples I looked at (China and Africa Government), there were over 500 records to access, ranging from contact details to a particular African embassy in China to Chinese companies operating in national infrastructures such as water and electricity provision or communication networks. There was even a list of all Chinese military involvement on the continent, which eventually brings up comparable statistics for other international forces.

It is at this stage ­ when you have gone through the first few steps ­ that you risk feeling overwhelmed and lost as you click further and further from your original starting point. There is little indication where the next click will take you: further down the information chain or eventually cycling round back to the start.

Keep clicking
Although you may often come across information pages which are mostly empty or contain little relevant information, they almost always lead to something else that is usable and useful. AfDevInfo says it is constantly updating its records, focusing its energies on one area at a time.

Where AfDevInfo comes into its own is as a directory of contacts and related information sources, and it links to related material very well. For example, if you wanted the names and addresses of all hydro power plants in East Africa, they are conveniently laid out together. If key information such as a full address or contact information is lacking, there is always a link to a related organisation, parent company or nearest rival, which the researcher would be able to then move on to.
The site may not be as flashy or rounded as many, but fancy graphics might hinder many in Africa from being able to use it. Instead it offers a credible and workable source for researchers of African information.

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