Recently, I was scouring the web for more data on marketing African businesses to companies worldwide and I came across a most informative site. No wonder they are also #1 on Google for a number of topics centering on Africa.
We are talking about Africa-ATA otherwise known as the Africa Travel Association. Now in addition to this site housing the association website, they are also home to the organization’s media publication-Africa Travel.
Now I know what you may be thinking, that this site may not cater to those seeking business information about specific regions of the continent, but to the contrary-they have quite a bit of detailed information. For instance, read this magazine forward by one of the magazine’s editors Jerry Bird. It is about Ethiopia and the rise of one of Ethiopia’s many treasures-Ethiopian Airlines.
Of course, you can also find the type of information that you would expect on a tourism and travel
- hotels
- airfare
- cruises
- safaris ( for eastern and southern Africa)
- food
- etc
But again, I can appreciate the other parts of their site like-investment promotion, fashion, African embassies, and other trade links too. Besides them being a storehouse of good information another thing that I like is that they have carefully balanced the information. They somehow manage to give readers a glimpse of all 53 countries in Africa, which is not an easy task. It looks like this month their focus is on Ethiopia.
In closing, I hope that you have a chance to visit their site and let me know what you thought about this top Google ranking Africa website.
photo courtesy of : Africa Travel Association
beninmwangi.com 
Who Ranks Number 1 on Google for Africa?
Brief post discusses an Africa related site that ranks very highly on google searches. Why do you think it ranks so highly?
By: Afriville.com on May 30, 2007
at 3:50 am
Excellent web resource. Thank you for sharing. Oddly enough, the other thing that I enjoyed about your post was the comment about “53 countries in Africa”. You would be amazed how many Americans view Africa as a monolith without any acknowledgement of the different countries, governements and such.
And those that acknowledge the borders of the 53 countries rarely if ever acknowlege that the borders were primarily determined by colonizing nations without regard to cultures, villages, and such.
Of course, this is off-topic … so I’ll end by saying … the ATA website is excellent (smile)!
peace, Villager
By: Villager on May 30, 2007
at 4:58 am
Hi Villager:
Thanks for stopping by. You have been pulling in quite a number of bloggers lately on your site. I think that’s great.
Yes, you are right, it is so easy to think of Africa as one entity based upon what we hear. But of course, as you have already stated that notion could not be any further from the truth.
But then on the other side of the coin there are people in Kenya who (from the Bantu language groups) are more related to some of their neighbors in southern Africa than they are to some of their counterparts of various parts of Kenya (like the Nilotic language groups), because of this fact. And in West Africa you have languages that span three or four countries (like Ewe and Fulani). Prior to the colonial period some of those languages would have probably constituted what we today would call states or nations-so again you are right there are lot’s of angles than one can see when looking at the African continent.
I am also glad that you enjoyed this post and the web site, too. That site is one of the best or maybe the best that I have seen when it comes to demystifying various African countries and making it easy for American people-tourist or business person to see why they should visit.
Thanks again!
By: Benin on May 30, 2007
at 5:10 am
We have“53 countries in Africa”.
I am with villager on this, most people outside of Africa, not only Americans think of Africa as one country with one single language, etc. It was these kind of thinking that lead to the formation of Japan Africa Network in march, this year. We are trying to give some detail information about the facts about the resources, investment opportunities, governments, travel destinations, African music and lifestyle.
Read more at:
By: Africarising on May 30, 2007
at 3:33 pm
Japan Africa Network website is at:
http://www.japanafricanet.com/
By: Africarising on May 30, 2007
at 3:38 pm
Africarising:
Thanks a lot for the link. Even in Japan, eye?
It seems like educating people about these types of facts is probably the most timely and poweful too that we can use to drive more trade and more interest. And you are doing a good job.
Thanks!
By: beninmwangi on May 30, 2007
at 4:29 pm
Benin, I stumbled upon this article and thought it might pull at your heart strings:
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2007/05/31/047.html
I was unaware that Renaissance was behind the $300 million UBA eurobond; equally interesting is how the guy mentions the Dubai connection in terms of funnelling Middle East $$$$ into the continent. Last but not least, he mentions actively financing the coming avalanche of corporate bonds.
Anyway, $ 1 bn fund will go a long way 🙂 I’m looking forward to seeing WHO they will bankroll.
By: Sijui on May 30, 2007
at 9:18 pm
Sijui:
Ohhhh….that was so wonderful of you to mention that. You know me well, that article is amazing. You know Russian investors have been pumping a lot of money into various regions of Africa and all of this talk of China sort of numbed me to this fact. But there were some large electricity projects in southern Africa like I want to say Namibia or somewwhere close, but I seem to recall a lot of the foreign capital coming from Russia.
I guess if you think about it Russia knows the southern tip of Africa very well, especially in the mining related businesses. Of course, so does the middle east-particularly the Emirates and Saudi Arabia-they are doing something really big in your childhood place right now with oil. So the Dubai connection was something that I have been familar with.
The bond fund, on the otherhand, I have never heard or read about but it sounds very interesting-my assumption is that these would be high bearing interest bonds, though. Is that what you got out of it?
So anyhow, thanks for the news and not to mention it’s good that we got a chance to catch up.
By: beninmwangi on May 31, 2007
at 5:19 am
Benin, I myself have rudimentary knowledge of how the bond market works, perhaps one of your contributors can enlighten us? I get the impression that bonds are lower yielding than the stock market because they are meant to be stable, predictable assets e.g. government securities. Nevertheless they are a critical source of long term financing for governments and corporations, again I’m assuming because the risk is considerably lower, their attractiveness is in the fact that investors receive a stable, guaranteed ROI and hence they can commit for the long haul. It is only now (sob, sob!!) that African governments are mustering the courage to issue sovereign bonds on the international capital markets based on the robustness of their economies. South Africa, of course has been taking the lead on this, as well as the more prosperous North African states……..Ghana will issue next month, followed by Nigeria, Kenya and I hear perhaps Zambia. Nigerian banks such as UBA have already started issuing corporate bonds on the international market, and the hope is the sovereign bonds will set the benchmark for corporate Africa to follow suit.
By: Sijui on May 31, 2007
at 1:43 pm
Benin Mwangi
This is my first time here and really admire what you are doing. As for ATA website, it has a lot of information all muddled up. They need to work on their presentation.
The UK ATTA is more organised and well executed. http://www.atta.co.uk/
Keep up the great work. You have a new fun.
Liz
By: africanliz on June 2, 2007
at 7:46 pm
Forgot to invite you to my blog on Africa
http://saharanvibe.blogspot.com/
Enjoy
Liz
By: africanliz on June 2, 2007
at 7:48 pm
@Sijui and Benin please email to me the article on the Moscow Times if by any chance you have it saved else where. I cant access it for free since the article is old.
They only have tit bits on the article. I have a blog that focuses on Africa and would like to read the article and hopefully could lead to great posting.
http://saharanvibe.blogspot.com/
By: africanliz on June 2, 2007
at 11:58 pm
Africanliz:
Thanks a lot for your comments. I have viewed your blog too and it is great. the article that you asked about may also be found here
http://pda.moscowtimes.ru/article.php?aid=177070
Otherwise, I look forward to hearing back from you!
By: Benin on June 3, 2007
at 5:02 am
Thanks Benin for the link :))))
By: africanliz on June 3, 2007
at 7:25 pm
I only came across this site today, and I must say I’m loving it.
The ATA website is really cool.
I’ll definitely be here for a long time.
By: skybaba on June 8, 2007
at 2:58 pm
African Liz:
Anytime, aye..
Skybaba:
So you are from Naija? That’s cool-I love Adeolu’s blog-he is really good.
Thanks for the kind words.
By: beninmwangi on June 10, 2007
at 5:22 am