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Bloggers Duke it Out for Ghana's First Ever Social Media Awards

Categories: Sub-Saharan Africa, Ghana, Citizen Media, Technology

For the first time in the country's online history, the best and brightest of Ghana's blogosphere will be awarded for their social media savvy.

BloggingGhana [1], a group of bloggers and social media users writing out of Ghana or the Ghanaian experience, will recognize the best bloggers and social media mavens in categories ranging from technology to citizen journalism to photography in the country's first ever social media awards on March 23, 2013.

The competition is fierce [2]. The blogging group received nominations for the awards from 314 people, totaling 1,128 nominations spread over 13 categories, according to their website. That averages about 87 nominations per category.

Logo of the organising committee. Image source: blogcampghana.com/

Logo of the organising committee. Image source: blogcampghana.com

Categories [3] for the awards include:

  • Best Technology Blog
  • Best Business & Commerce Blog
  • Best Citizen Journalism Blog
  • Best Creative, Literary Short Stories, Poetry Blog
  • Best Showbiz and Entertainment Blog
  • Best Lifestyle Blog
  • Best Activist Blog
  • Best Photo Blog
  • Best Organisational Blog
  • Best Blog


Other Social Media Categories

  • Personality with Best Social Media Presence
  • Organisation with Best Social Media Presence
  • Best Original Content

The Social Media Awards officially kicked off on January 8, 2013, launched under the theme “Content is King”. BloggingGhana co-founder Kajsa Hallberg Adu [4] (@kajsaha [5]) tweeted:

@kajsaha [6]: With this tweet, I mandate the #Blogcamp13 [7] team to go find the Best Blogger in 2012! blogcampghana.com [8] May the best win! #233moments [9]

BloggingGhana reported [10] that they began to receive nominations only a few hours after the awards’ official launch. The nomination period closed February 1, 2013.

Born from a small meet-up of bloggers in 2008, BloggingGhana seeks to educate the general public in Ghana on social media and promote citizen journalism. Writing about that first meeting, BloggingGhana [11] states on its website:

We wrote:

“we would like to bring the Ghanaian blog community together in real life! There is so much to say…about our green homeland, if Blogger is better than WordPress, if labels are useful, how best to boost and count traffic,  what Internet cafées [sic] are fast and of course how blogging changes your life…”

Continuing the tradition of bringing bloggers together offline, the organization hosted a day of workshops in Ghana on May 5, 2012, dubbed BlogCamp. Blogger and science teacher Gameli Adzaho [12]wrote about the event in a post titled “Unforgetable memories of #BlogCamp 2012″ [13]:

There are some memories that are easily swept off by the tidal waves of time and events. There are others that are etched deep in our consciousness, replaying like sweet music in our minds as the days roll by. BlogCamp 2012, organised by BloggingGhana [1], Ghana’s biggest social media community, falls into the latter category. Held at Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT on 5 May 2012, and sponsored by Vodafone Ghana, Google Ghana, US Embassy Accra, etc., Ghana’s first BlogCamp truly lived up to its theme of creating the “Voice of a New Generation”

To cast your vote for best of Ghana's blogs, visit here. [14]