The sheer magnitude of the American and European influence on the Internet makes it hard to find African web sites. And with more and more web sites springing up all the time, it's taking longer and longer to wade through them to find the information you want. This guide does not pretend to be a comprehensive directory of African web sites - that is really only possible on the Internet itself -- but instead a timesaving guide to sites that can be relied on to help online researchers.
Web sites have been selected on the quality of their content. Not all of them are brilliantly designed or impeccably edited but they are all worth visiting if you have an interest in that particular subject or country. Recommended sites (marked with 
) have excellent content and are easy to navigate. This often means no animations or sophisticated graphics. Economic design is particularly important with sites hosted in Africa as the connection can make them slow loading without the added burden of useless bells and whistles. Interactivity is seldom fully exploited, but some of the best sites offer discussion forums, email newsletters and chat-rooms.
The web is not static and sites do change. Vibrant sites may suddenly lose impetus and not be updated for months, or alternatively, bland pages may get a shot of inspiration and prove their review very wrong.
Most of the country sections include a reliable portal for further explorations into that country's web territory. Each country's web code is provided as an easy, although not foolproof, way to identify local sites. (Many sites do still use .com or .org instead of their own country code.)
South Africa has the largest online presence of any country in Africa and accordingly has by far the most pages devoted to its web sites.
Many African sites are in French and they may have been unfairly reviewed due to this reviewer's limited grasp of the language. Ditto with the less common Portuguese, Swahili and Arabic sites.
A few sites that span more than one category have been duplicated to make them easy to find.
You won't find many shopping sites in this guide; the emphasis has been on sites that provide information useful to researchers. The few shopping sites that do make the cut reflect this reviewer's personal tastes: books, CDs, wine and convenient grocery shopping. There is no shortage of other e-commerce sites: just go to any of the online directories listed and browse the shopping section.
Happy surfing.
* Mike Jensen's African Internet Connectivity web site has proved an invaluable source of information when researching the status of Internet development on the continent -- http://www3.sn.apc.org/africa/.
