The first experiment to put Tanzanian Affairs online was in May 2007 (Issue 87), using free blogging software called WordPress having obtained site www.tzaffairs.org. As well as adding each new issue since then, I have slowly worked through the back issues scanning, tidying up and uploading the text to the website, so now there is a complete record from Issue 21 (July 1985) onwards. Visitors can search for a keyword, or view a particular issue by selecting it from the “Category” drop down box, or choose by date using the “Archives by Date” box.

A graph of pages served by the website shows a steady growth in visits as more and more content has been added to the site. Many of these “visits” are by automated web-bots such as Google, so the numbers should be taken with a large pinch of salt.

Recently, however, new software from Google has allowed us to monitor visitors more accurately, and it was a pleasant surprise to see that in the three months since Issue 99 was issued, 9,768 people have visited the site from some 158 countries. Even more encouraging is the number of visitors from Tanzania – making up 32% of visitors, with USA (16%) and UK (11%) making up the top three countries. It would be wrong to think that all these visits were from people keen to read in-depth articles, and indeed some of them may have visited by accident or just to see a photo, but it is nevertheless evidence that Tanzanian Affairs is reaching a wider audience.

The task remains to get issues 1 to 20 online – for this we need a volunteer able to take the issues from David Brewin in London, scan them at high resolution (600dpi) and then transfer the files to me here in Botswana using ftp (or CD). Please contact me at jacob{AT}kwangu{DOT}com if able to assist.
Jacob Knight