Who We Are

AllAfrica Global Media is a multi-media content service provider, systems technology developer and the largest electronic distributor of African news and information worldwide. Registered in Mauritius, with offices in Johannesburg, Dakar, Lagos and Washington, D.C., AllAfrica is one of a family of companies that aggregate, produce and distribute news from across Africa to tens of millions of end users.

This website, allAfrica.com, is among the Internet's largest content sites, posting over 1000 stories daily in English and French and offering a diversity of multi-lingual streaming programming as well as over 900,000 articles in our searchable archive (which includes the archive of Africa News Service dating from 1997). Strategic alliances with media and information technology companies, such as Comtex News Network, Radio France Internationale, and the BBC, extend AllAfrica's global reach. Content agreements with over 130 African news organizations generate steady revenues for the content partners and give them, in turn, access to the prize-winning reporting of the AllAfrica team.

The AllAfrica family includes AllAfrica, Inc., registered in Delaware, and the AllAfrica Foundation, a non-profit organization that sponsors the Charlayne Hunter-Gault Fellowship for African women journalists, and operates sustainableafrica.org and PeaceAfrica.net, digital commons for African development and peace networks, as well as a new multimedia HealthAfrica initiative

Johannesburg bureau chief Ofeibea Quist-Arcton with AllAfrica President Amadou Mahtar Ba.

Global Audience

AllAfrica's reach is worldwide. The growing website serves over 12 million monthly page views (over 100 million monthly "hits"). More than 14,000 other web sites carry AllAfrica's constantly updating headline modules or otherwise link to the site. The AllAfrica News Wire offers premium business feeds and continuously refreshing news for wireless devices such as cell phones and handheld organizers and supplies commercial clients worldwide through such services as LexisNexis, Bloomberg, Financial Times Information, Factiva (Reuters and Dow Jones) and L' Européenne des Données, which together reach tens of millions of end users.

Members of AllAfrica's technology team.

Technology Services and Infrastructure

AllAfrica's technology services and infrastructure division, called Xymbol, commercializes the company's core technology platform, providing flexible, scalable and interoperable solutions for data management, content delivery, work-flow management, transactional functionality and transference across platforms. Built on best-of-breed, open-source technologies, AllAfrica's modular, customized solutions offer clients maximum control and compatibility with existing and future systems, whether open source or proprietary.

The power and efficiency of the core technology - which allows AllAfrica to operate with a fraction of the staff and budget of news companies of similar scope - is coming to be recognized as a unique resource with broad applicability. Clients include major organizations with complex, sophisticated technology demands, including those outside the sectors of Africa-interest or media.

Currently, AllAfrica is seeking partners for our planned development of network infrastructure and peered data hubs in key African locations, designed to streamline access and download time for our partners and customers, but also extendable as a community resource. The initiative will bring next-generation content-delivery services to select major cities and will connect those services to data centers elsewhere in the world.

In short, AllAfrica is the entry point to a global, Africa-interested audience, as well as a pioneering set of technologies that addresses a significant marketplace gap for secure, accessible and cost-effective transactions and data management.

Senior Diplomatic Correspondent, Charles Cobb, interviews Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo.

AllAfrica Executive Editor/Producer, Akwe Amosu, interviews Nigerian Information Minister Jerry Gana.

Heritage

AllAfrica is the successor to the non-profit Africa News Service, which produced prize-winning print and broadcast reporting for major media such as National Public Radio, the Washington Post and the BBC for two decades, prior to developing an online venture. In late 1999, the Africa News board of directors recognized that the site's 25%-a-quarter growth rate could not be sustained without investment. To ensure its survival, the project's archive was transferred to AllAfrica, which has expanded the base of content providers and developed new services. The expansion will ensure larger earnings for the venture's African content partners.

The AllAfrica Team

AllAfrica is blessed with a richly diverse group of committed people, dedicated to making the venture the premiere global platform for Africa information, interests and transactions. By background, our staff have come from African, European, North American, Asian, Arab, Jewish, Christian and Muslim origins. Among us we speak over two dozen languages.

Our team has accrued, collectively, over a quarter century of experience in generating value through the Internet. We boast experienced marketers, business developers, producers, editors, and some of Africa's most accomplished journalists - winners of multiple national and international awards. The business team represents more than 30 years in the fields of investment banking, financial advisory services, accounting and marketing. Technical team members' experiences include: developing the programming language for the Lego MindStorms robotic toy lines; writing the first embedded virtual machine for the Java programming language; and designing, building and managing massively parallel networks for the MIT media lab.

Actor and activist Danny Glover visits AllAfrica.

Some of AllAfrica's editorial staff.

We have built a site that won top ranking in the Britannica "Pick of the Web's Best Sites" and achieved a monthly average of time spent per user - a "stickiness" quotient used to indicate user interest - higher than for five of the Nielsen NetRatings Top Ten. AllAfrica.com has been selected an Amazon.com Associate of the Month; Foreign Policy magazine featured it as a site "the world is watching;" and Yahoo ranks it as the top Africa site. We have won coveted nominations as Best News Site for a Webby Award, known as the "Oscars of the Internet" in back-to-back years. Our commitment is to being the premiere global platform for Africa information, interests and transactions.

A Loyal Following

This enterprise exists on a four-tiered revenue stream of advertisements and transactions, subscriptions, information sales and technology services. You can directly support our creation of a strong global voice for Africa and increase the earnings of our content partners across the continent by patronizing the affiliate programs that feature books and other items for sale and by clicking on our advertisements, rather than ignoring or blocking them. But you also help simply by accessing the information on our site and by telling everyone you know about us. Despite the challenges of operating in a time of economic and political uncertainty, every page view we deliver increases our advertising revenue; every click to view one of our advertisements increases the rates we can charge those advertisers; every book or CD or airplane ticket you buy through our site brings us royalty income. As we continue to grow over the coming months, we'll expand our range of features, information and options. Use us and let us know what you think and how we can better serve your needs.

You can support the work of the AllAfrican Foundation with a contribution (tax-deductiable in the United States). You can also help sustain AllAfrica's work by becoming subscriber, which provides access to AllAfrica's growing archive, use of a powerful search engine and the option to choose from up to 15 daily email updates. Click here for more information.

Contact Information

Contact us by clicking here or by phone through our administrative office in Washington, DC at (202) 546-0777. Fax (202) 546-0676

Our U.S. mailing address is 920 M Street SE, Washington, DC 20003.