The attractions The African Studies WWW provides high quality information about Africa that can be used to enhance curriculum development, academic collaboration, and community awareness. Africans and African Studies scholars worldwide can now access the African Studies WWW - an indexed, searchable repository for files on the topics listed below. African networking, BBS, e-mail, discussion groups, software, etc. A student interested in South Africa can read Nelson Mandela's most recent speech online, learn how to send e-mail to Johannesburg, download the latest country map, search the job listings for South Africa, or connect to the Rhodes University library. A graduate student planning to do research in Senegal can identify sources of potential funding, find the current State Department travel advisory, locate other research being done in the region, contact the Senegalese Embassy in Washington, D.C., and even learn how to prepare Senegalese cuisine.
Users are from myriad academic, commercial, and private sector institutions worldwide.
The limited access to telecommunications resources by African institutions is clearly reflected in usage statistics. For example, last October, usage broken down by country revealed that only .3 percent of total global usage was from African institutions. The African Studies WWW promotes interdisciplinary instruction and research in African languages and area studies by undertaking projects that relate information technology with African Studies. File retrieval via e-mail. Without such a tool, African participation in WWW development would be limited to the small percentage of African countries that have full Internet connectivity.