Faal is the man behind the Faal Academy, a website that offers video lectures, presentations, and tips on various computer programs. Don't know how to create a certain effect in Adobe Photoshop? Need help making a newsletter in Microsoft Word? Faal can show you how.

After spending most of his career in the classroom, Faal now spends the majority of his time teaching online. Global Voices recently caught up with Faal and asked him about the move.

Ousman Faal at work. Photo courtesy of Demba Kandeh.

Demba Kandeh (DK): What motivated you to blog?

Ousman Faal (OF): I have been an IT instructor in capacity building training with non-governmental organisations for several years in my career as a tutor. I have also formed a youth group called ICT Community. And I have lots of Google online platforms and blogging sites, WordPress, Webs & Blogger. I have experience in creating interactive video lectures and this greatly motivated me to blog.

DK: How long have you being blogging?

OF: Well, I have been blogging for a year now and found it amazing because it's another way of expressing myself and putting my content online and sharing them. I started with Google's blogger and Google Sites then to a fast growing CMS (Content Management System) WordPress which I found very interactive and user friendly.

DK: How has blogging changed your life?

OF: Blogging helps me to express myself and has made it possible for more and more people to see my talents. I am therefore, in a way, contributing to help more people out there now than ever before. And this makes me feel happy as a blogger.

DK: What do you hope to achieve in blogging?

OF: I am “thinking big”. I hope that blogging will change a lot in my career as an ICT practitioner.

DK: How is life as a teacher on a blog different from life as a teacher in the classroom?

OF: I always want to show my students that I am always available for them, as sometimes you teach in the class students might not actually get the exact picture of what you were trying to explain maybe because of distraction, but I believe that with a blog full of interactive content they can always view it with ease and understand more. This is a great source of satisfaction.

Below is a YouTube video of one of his tutorials:

DK: What are your success stories?

OF: After having six years in the IT field and having done so much research on information technology I really realized that I am paving myself a way to a successful career. I have successfully trained many professionals within a short period of time and that is something worth celebrating. The Internet, my second home, has offered my students a permanent reference point for interactive content.

The successful management of the following sites is also a pride for me: ICT Gambia, OusFaal, Jollof Tutors, Ousman Lectures and My YouTube channel.

DK: What challenges do you face?

OF: I do not bother so much about challenges. In Africa generally and the Gambia in particular, challenges are common and they range from slow but expensive Internet connections to erratic power cuts. Yet I look forward to more challenging opportunities in the future because I believe that the future is brighter as far as technology is concern.

DK: What are your plans for the future?

OF: I have a lot in mind because I am “thinking big” every day. I would love to have my own social network in the future which will be based on real advanced technology. A social media for better and more refined teaching styles and outputs is also part of my dreams.

DK: Please share anything else you consider important.

OF: I wish to take this opportunity to call on like minded bloggers to join hands and bring about positive change in their environment. I think this is a good thing to do to put together bloggers that are willing to use their time to create an online platform for sharing information for the benefit of others.

Written by Demba Kandeh · comments (4)
Share: Donate · facebook · twitter · reddit · StumbleUpon · delicious · Instapaper

Advocacy groups have long criticized the Gambia's President Yahya Jammeh for his dismal record on press freedom. A self-proclaimed healer who says he has found cures to AIDS, obesity, and erectile dysfunction, Jammeh is on the 2012 list of predators to press freedom by Reporters Without Borders.

With the emergence of social media, many observers worry that Jammeh's brutal restrictions on mainstream journalists are likely to be transferred to netizens.

Gambian President Yahya Jammeh. Photo by Wikipedia user JohnArmagh. Used under the GNU Free Documentation License.

Even though the West African country is said to have a lower cost of internet connectivity compared to other countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, the number of bloggers and netizens is relatively low. Here are some of the most active and popular blogs in Gambia, mostly run by Gambian journalists who have been sent into redundancy by the country’s anti-press laws and practices.

The Gambia News Online is run by Lamin Jahateh. It is an independent and non-partisan blog that seeks to feed its readers with the latest news and events in the Gambia and beyond with a special focus on economic and financial news, features, and analysis. “At Gambia News Online, we tell the news as it happens,” according to Jahateh.

Modou S. Joof is the editor and publisher of The North Bank Evening Standard blog, which is dedicated to “Telling the stories of Africa to over one billion Africans”. But just below that Joof has this for his readers: “To our dear subscribers, readers, and followers: please be informed that from now till 2015 this blog may not be UPDATED on a daily basis. This is because the publisher and editor is currently pursuing a two-year diploma course on journalism and mass communication. He maybe too busy to keep up with the much needed pace and frequency to keep this blog UPDATED on a daily basis.”

The Gambia News Wave is another news blog edited and managed by Demba Kandeh, also a journalist (the author of this post). The blog is dedicated to information sharing.

Image accompanying a post about the Gambian insurance industry's campaign to eradicate poor public image. Photo credit: Lamin Jahateh.

Amat Jeng is also a Gambian journalist based in Sweden and blogs at Media Revolution. He notes that his blog is a reservoir for news about the Gambia and the sub-region. It endeavors to give impartial reports to anyone interested in business, economy, financial, and political news about the Gambia.

In his latest post on February 7, 2013, Jeng revealed the Gambia’s domestic debt burden increase for the period 2011-2012. He is one of the few Gambian bloggers based abroad.

Women’s Bantaba is managed by Binta Bah, a journalist and a women’s rights activist. She notes that her blog aspires to tell stories that have never been told. Her latest post is an interview with one of the Gambia’s leading women and girls’ rights activists, Amie Bojang Sissoho, a programme officer at the Gambia Committee on Traditional Practice (GAMCOTRAP).

The Nget Cell blog is run by Abdoulie Nget. A layout designer, Nget was also the sports editor of the once popular newspaper in the Gambia, The Daily News. The newspaper, along with two media houses, was ordered to close down operations late last year by operatives of the Gambia’s notorious National Intelligence Agency (NIA).

Other blogs on the Gambia include the following:
Kissykissy Mansa
Gambia Affairs
Gambia Business Updates
The Kingdom (Mansabanko)
Campus and Field News
Young Journalists Association of The Gambia

Written by Demba Kandeh · comments (1)
Share: Donate · facebook · twitter · reddit · StumbleUpon · delicious · Instapaper