Africa and Google Search or Burkina Faso's Assault on the Internet

Two recurring themes on this Yuppie blog include Africa and Google. I use Google Analytics and Google Earth almost every day. I also think about traveling to Africa each and every day.

A few weeks back I created a map that displayed the number of tweet mentions per African country per million residents. I found it quite fascinating.

This post is similar but instead of tweets it simply compares the number of pages a Google search will find for each country (in millions). This number can be found at the top of any google search.

I...hypothesized that there would be a big discrepancy in what I expected to be the big dogs such as South Africa and Egypt and the lesser known countries like Equatorial Guinea or Eritrea (which I swear NOBODY seems to know about despite the conflict in and around the area).

Well, I was half right. SA and Egypt came in at number one and three respectively. Number two in our countdown, however, is the biggest of several unexpected placements.

Burkina Faso? Seriously? Now, there were a few unintuitive results I half expected (haha- how can you half expect something :) whether it be Chad placing high because it's also a name or Somalia's search results being inflated because of the American twenty-something's fascination with pirates, Guinea, being part of Guinea Pig certainly would rank high- What I'm getting at is that I knew there would be some surprises but I wasn't expecting this many.

I thought and thought about why Burkina Faso would be so high. I looked at the first few pages of results hoping for a clue but nothing. I thought to look at the google adwords that popped up on the side: Burkina Faso Pictures, Burkina Faso Girls and Burkina Faso, Trip Advisor. After seeing the second result I thought perhaps Burkina Faso was the new Russia when it came to mail order brides...I don't think that's it though. So I ask you, please help me solve the mystery of Burkina Faso in Google Searches. WHY?!

I know google can be sensitive to location and your own search history. I wouldn't think that the number of results found would change from place to place as I'm pretty sure that number would remain relatively static but if you find anything different than what I have, I encourage you to comment and let me know (cause this sort of thing really fascinates me for some reason).

In the map below the countries towards the red end of the spectrum have the highest number of search results whereas the green end of the spectrum indicates fewer google search results. I've included the full list of countries and the number of results in millions below the map.

I was also surprised to see Zimbabwe second to last. For a country that has been in the news a LOT in the last couple years, it sure doesn't have a big presence on the internet, er...I mean Google. The internet is much more than Google....right? :) Ethiopia was much lower than expected too.

I was surprised to see Burundi have more search results than Rwanda, and Mali! Mali is another place nobody seems to know about. I'd venture a guess that more American's have heard of Timbuktu than Mali. Although Timbuktu only has just over 2 million hits on a google search.

And here is our map:



South Africa 214
Burkina Faso 182
Egypt 166
Mali 135
Nigeria 123
Kenya 118
Guinea 113
Angola 110
Congo (Kinshasa) 105
Congo (Brazzaville) 105
Madagascar 104
Ghana 103
Sudan 98.7
Togo 98.1
Morocco 96.8
Chad 94.8
Senegal 92.6
Botswana 91.2
Malawi 89.7
Uganda 89.3
Tunisia 88.8
Sierra Leone 88.6
Algeria 87.2
Mauritius 87
Tanzania 87
Seychelles 86.7
Burundi 86.7
Liberia 85
Namibia 84.9
Gabon 84.9
Lesotho 84.7
Mozambique 81.9
Somalia 80.8
Benin 79.5
Zambia 79.1
Rwanda 77.5
Libya 76.7
Gambia 76.4
Cape Verde 76.3
Guinea-Bissau 75.1
Eritrea 72.7
Djibouti 72.1
Mauritania 72
Swaziland 71.9
Ethiopia 71.7
Central African Republic 70.8
Cameroon 66.4
Comoros 65.7
Western Sahara 57.3
Equatorial Guinea 57.1
Sao Tome and Principe 38.9
Côte d'Ivoire 30.5
Zimbabwe 21.3
Niger 15.7

Countdown to Namibia

After my trip to London and Tanzania I knew I had caught the international travel bug - BAD. Every day at work I stare across my desk at the 50 x 70 National Geographic world map and think about the possibilities. An infatuation with flight price checking on kayak.com also seems to work its way into my daily activities.

There are few places in the world I don't want to visit. Places in Africa, however, always seem to rise to the top.

When I was 17 or 18 and still lived at home I stumbled upon (of course this was before stumble upon) the Christmas Island Marathon. The annual event held on the Australian Island just south of Indonesia. It made perfect sense, train for a marathon, travel to a tiny remote island in the Indian Ocean and have stories for a lifetime.

It's always seemed like a good idea.

In the last ten years I've looked up information on the Christmas Island Marathon a handful of times but the timing or desire was never quite there.

After returning from Tanzania the idea began to intrigue me more and more. The last time I had looked up the Christmas Island Marathon I couldn't find anything past 2006 or 2007, I was concerned that the event was no longer being held.

A few weeks ago, when the idea once again crossed my mind, a google search revealed information about the 2009 Christmas Island Marathon. Thrilled that the event is still going on I got information about travel to the island. I was getting very excited about the idea.

I don't know what the google search was but later that day I came across something that just clicked with me. I knew, right from the time I read about it that it was for me: the 2010 Namibia Marathon.

I registered, secured my spot, and paid my registration fee of 150 GBP. I have a shit load of work ahead of me but am incredibly excited about the challenge. The wait for my Tanzania trip was horribly long and drawn out. This time I get to work each and every day towards the trip.

And so, I have begun my training for the 2010 Namibia marathon and I couldn't be happier.

Twitter and Africa

In what may prove to be the most random thing ever, I embarked on a new nerd project today. I incorporated three interests of mine, Africa, Maps and Twitter. I wanted to compare the "twitter footprint" of each country- just how many mentions might each African country get in a week? I used tweetdeck for my "research". I quickly discovered that, using the week long search history, most of the countries had reached the maximum 100 search records. To combat this I instead searched using the hashtag #. I've never understood the reason for using hashtags but it helped this exercise since it greatly reduced the number of search records.

I went ahead and multiplied the results by a million. I did this a.), because it seems to be the way to do these things and 2, because comparing .0000001 and .0000003 isn't all that interesting, or at best, less interesting than when increased to numbers we're more used to seeing.

A few things stood out:

1. People don't often refer to their friends named Chad using hashtags. That, and I'm glad Ocho Cinco hasn't done anything worth mentioning in the last week.
2. I forgot Lesotho! Oops. I checked - zero hashtag mentions, so it's safe to say it would be yellow in the map below.
3. Differentiating between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Republic of the Congo for this exercise is not worth the effort.
4. Not a single person mis-tweeted the word Mail by typing Mali in the last week.
5. More people live in Washtenaw County in Michigan than Western Sahara. While that isn't a surprise, it was surprising to see that the county which boasts both Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan had no #mentions in the last week.

You can click on the map below for a larger image.



I hope you enjoy this little nerd project. I've done a few others you should check out including:

Africa-US Relations
Michigan Man on the Moon
Unredeemed Giftcards

Each country is listed below in its category

Tweet Champs
Seychelles
Western Sahara
Botswana
Mauritius
Liberia
Namibia
Gabon
Madagascar

Very High
Somalia
Gambia
Ghana
Zimbabwe
Cape Verde

High
Congo
Guinea-Bissau
Kenya

Moderate
Rwanda
Swaziland
Malawi
Uganda
Sudan
South Africa
Mauritania

Low
Morocco
Djibouti
Senegal
Burundi
Zambia
Egypt
Tunisia
Congo (Kinshasa)

On Twitter life support
Libya
Mali
Eritrea
Tanzania
Ethiopia
Nigeria
Guinea

Tweet Chumps
Benin
Niger
Algeria
Sierra Leone
Burkina Faso
Cameroon
Togo
Chad
Angola
Mozambique
Côte d'Ivoire
Comoros
Central African Republic
Equatorial Guinea
Sao Tome and Principe

Happy map making, wander-lusting, tweeting and blogging.

For a great perspective on the topic, check out Soyapi Mumba's Blog post

Discussion and Map of US-African Relationships

With President Obama's recent trip to Africa I started thinking about the political relations between the US and the many African Nations. The forgotten continent is a source of great natural resources, cultural richness and strategic geographic location.

I thought it would be interesting to facilitate a conversation on US-African relations. I've created a draft map of Africa showing each country's relationship with the United States. I've broken the map into six different categories, Negative, Strained, Neutral, Improving, Positive and Good.

These ratings ARE completely subjective. This draft is based on my knowledge of African-US relations along with some quick research. It was hard to define criteria for the six different categories I used but listed below are a few general guidelines.

Negative - Beyond minor political differences, a negative rating suggests severely strained and complex relationships.

Strained - Various issues have caused either sanctions or specific actions by the US Government.

Neutral - While some positives are included in the relationship, various issues prevent a better relationship with the US

Improving - Countries who have historically had a strained relationship with the US but are improving and steps have been made to better the relationship.

Positive - Most African Countries were placed in this category which represents a cordial relationship, mutual respect and support.

Good - Often involving military agreements with the US and strong support of each other in International groups such as the United Nations. These nations also generally have respected democratic political processes with duly elected leadership willing to work with the United States.



Again, this rating system and the ratings themselves are subjective. I welcome your comments, suggestions and criticisms. I'm really interested in facilitating a discussion on the US relationships with African countries. Let me know if you agree or disagree and WHY!

I've included the categorized list below. To get a large, high quality view of the US-African relationship map, click on the image.


Negative
Somalia
Sudan

Strained
Eritrea
Zimbabwe

Neutral
Mauritania
Gambia
DRC
Libya
Central African Republic

Improving
Liberia
Angola
Congo
Uganda
Algeria

Positive
South Africa
Burkina Faso
Ghana
Côte d'Ivoire
Guinea
Sierra Leone
Guinea-Bissau
Cape Verde
Seychelles
Mauritius
Comoros
Malawi
Madagascar
Mozambique
Rwanda
Burundi
Swaziland
Lesotho
Namibia
Gabon
Ethiopia
Kenya
Egypt
Chad
Niger
Cameroon
Equatorial Guinea
Nigeria
Benin
Togo

Good
Morocco
Mali
Senegal
Tanzania
Zambia
Botswana
Djibouti
Tunisia
Sao Tome and Principe

One Pavilion to Another

Blogging is fun. It requires a certain amount of dedication and time. I'd say the last post on about half the blogs out there deal with apologies from the author about how they've neglected their audience...and those posts are often a year old (I've also found this to be the case with b-list star's websites - why I know that we'll leave up to your imagination).

So I guess this is my version of that so common post. But I had a good reason (and now it sounds even more like all the rest). I don't have a desktop at home, only a laptop and one that is about 4.5 years old at that! In part due to its age and in (large) part due to the visiting of sites not suited for work and some sites that are REALLY not suited for work, my computer was rendered ultimately useless and pathetic. My old HP Pavilion served me well, but it was time to move on.

...to ANOTHER HP Pavilion. Installation was a breeze and I have a computer in good enough shape to type blog posts again. Given that, and the ever changing soap opera that is my life, you'll be hearing more from me once again.

6 weeks to Africa!

Following Mugabe vs. Tsvangirai and the Last King of Scotland

Current events are not only interesting but an easy way to start conversations. In the US we don't get much exposure to international news compared to some of the local stories that get jammed down our throat. While stories like Natalee Holloway, and going way back in the day Michael Fay (remember? caning in Singapore) catch the national media attention, a lot of significant global stories simply don't get much attention. Especially if they don't directly involve Americans.

I'd like to recommend you start following one of the stories I have been following as of late, the election and run off in Zimbabwe between Robert Mugabe (probably the most intimidating 84 year old you'll see) and the President of the MDC Party, Morgan Tsvangirai. Trying to sort out potential media bias and gaining a better understanding of the political environment in Zimbabwe is, to me, quite interesting.

Similarly, might I recommend the movie The Last King of Scotland. Not only is Forest Whitaker's portrayal of Idi Amin one of the best performances I've ever seen, the entire movie and story (though hollywoodisized some) are absolutely fantastic.