My absence from this blog has me questioning my identity as a blogger.  I’ve wanted to write for most of March but failed to do so.  Work, specifically two projects, has occupied most of my time (including weekends).  I’m a very disorganized blogger, even under the best of circumstances, so a busy month has translated into a silent blog.

But, but.  The projects are so interesting and I’m excited at the year ahead.  I will share information on one now and leave the second for another post.

I discovered BloggingGhana (BloGh), a community of bloggers and social media users who cover various issues about Ghana, when I started blogging back in 2010.  I joined the group and long story short, this year I’m leading one of its projects.  Ghana Decides is a social media elections project.  Ghanaians will go to the polls this year to elect a new president and over 230 members of parliament. The project will cover the elections via the use of blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and other social media platforms.

The proportion of Ghanaians who use social media is rather low.  So project activities will include interactions with offline groups so that we can reach as many Ghanaians as possible. Our target groups include the youth, organizations that serve the physically challenged, prisoners, and  those who reside in severely deprived and excluded areas.   The project seeks to ensure a plurality of voices in the online election-related conversation.

Ghana Decides was launched in late March and we’ve embarked on a voter registration campaign, which will run concurrently with the national biometric registration exercise.  iRegistered encourages Ghanaians to go out and register to vote.  You can follow the campaign on Twitter at #iRegistered.

You can also follow the conversation at #GhanaDecides throughout the year.

I will provide more updates throughout the year.  This explains the increased number of political tweets that are broadcasted from my Twitter account!

Press Release on Ghana Decides

————————–

March is gone, April is here. I will not bother with a wrap-up of what I read nor will I specify any plans for April.  I’ll just go with the flow and see how I do.  I do hope to read and blog more.

Enjoy your reading in April!